Bhaalspawn Rebellion
by Blue-Inked Frost
Summary: Baldur's Gate, IN SPACE. Lionstone XIV, the Empress, rules as a tyrant from the Iron Throne. The warrior Ourawang, daughter of Bhaal, seeks to overthrow her, but not without help from a cyberrat, an esper, a thug, and a mad terrorist. Fusion crossover with Simon R. Green's Deathstalker series. Don't need to know canon.
1. Imperial Palace: Irenicus

_Summary_ : Baldur's Gate, IN SPACE. Lionstone XIV, the Empress, rules as a tyrant from the Iron Throne. The warrior Ourawang, daughter of Bhaal, seeks to overthrow her, but not without help from a cyberrat, an esper, a thug, and a mad terrorist. Fusion crossover with Simon R. Green's Deathstalker series. Don't need to know canon.

 _Disclaimer_ : Baldur's Gate and Simon R. Green's Deathstalker series are not mine. Characters, worldbuilding, and quote references to these series are only borrowed for purposes of fanfic.

* * *

Jon Irenicus, first-ranked among Imperial scientists and confidante to the dread Empress herself, sat in his study. Frost rimed his white walls in his white room, though the cold did not visibly touch his gleaming steel instruments and clear glass AI screens.

Irenicus listened politely, with his full attention, to the current inhabitant of the Empire's Iron Throne. She was all cold, razor-edged, wintry glory. She appeared full-face to him, her fair hair wound into elaborate plaits around the diamond crown of the Empire. The Iron Bitch of Golgotha. She was vicious, greedy, deadly, and sharp as a sewer rat trapped in a corner. Empress Lionstone her own bad self.

"I want that stardrive," the Empress' holographic image snapped. "I want mass production to start decades ago. The work's going out of your experiments and into the Families' factories. Understand?"

"The alien energies require further investigation. Not one of the Families' pet puppets can understand it as I," Irenicus returned. He knew this was true: he was Chief Scientist because his intellect towered above others like a star to petty ants, not out of politics or a desire for a mere sinecure. He subvocalised an AI command to open a feed from one of his experiment rooms. There, a group of women with the same face-rather, with once the same face, before the alien energies mutated them all into differently hideous creatures in constant pain-worked around the alien stardrive in the centre of the room, carrying out his tests as ordered.

It was illegal for a man with no Family to manufacture clones. But these were a necessary business expense, and besides, the original genetic material was owned by the Imperial Crown.

"Duplicating the stardrive is enough. Stuff your investigation," the Empress said.

"A little more time, Empress. Let us say six months," Irenicus said. "The Families can begin by configuring their factories according to the designs I've already drafted."

"Don't be greedy." The Empress' teeth glinted a predatory white. "You know what happened the last time."

The Empress' holographic view swept back to show a vista of her with some of her maids: three naked, shaven women with blind cybernetic eyes and sharp steel fingernails. Since it would be improper for any of the Empress' subjects to look upon her in vulnerable moments, the maids had all their senses surgically removed and replaced by a host of cybernetic devices. Some of which Irenicus had designed himself. They were brainwashed servants and bodyguards, merciless killers and uncomplaining hands.

It was officially a great honour for a girl of the Families to be chosen as a maid to the Empress, but somehow the Families never saw it that way.

"One month," the Empress said. Irenicus bowed his head, careful to hide his satisfaction. The alien stardrive had been an impressive find. A starship crew had landed on the planet Unseeli to investigate the complete silence from the Base. The crew discovered an alien starship with malevolent aliens from a dying homeworld, fleeing a dreaded terror. Their stardrive had capability of which the Empire could only dream.

Until now.

"As you command, Empress." Irenicus schooled his face to show no expression, a cold man in his cold room. He barely looked at the second of the Empress' maids, the woman whose face was on all his clones.

Her name was once Ellesime. She was born with all gifts: noble birth, incredible wealth, unsurpassed beauty, and a true talent for gardening. And with all her gifts she saw Irenicus not as a lowly born scientist but as a man. They were lovers until Ellesime betrayed the Empire. She tried to change her planet for the sake of the peasant rebels. Irenicus turned her in: he hoped for a position as Chief Scientist and for Ellesime's fate to be given to him. The Empress gave him the position but not his lover. She was made a brainwashed maid under the Empress' control. Jon was left with his clones.

The clones weren't satisfactory. Irenicus conducted exhaustive experiments on them each time they failed.

The Empress' hologram abruptly disappeared. She had given all the orders she wished.

"Jon-Jon ..." Irenicus heard from another source.

He didn't bother to turn to the eavesdropper in the corner, hidden by one of his steel devices. She was a crucial flaw in most Empire security systems: a living being so cold and dead that no heat signature could ever find her. She prowled out of her hiding place, wearing a black basque and little else. She had a voluptuous body, sinews that could match steel with ease, and a smell of blood on her breath at all times.

Bodhi was his sister, and a Wampyr. Wampyr were developed as Empire shock troops, until the project was discontinued. The drawback was that the subjects were killed in the process. All the blood was pumped out of them and replaced by a new form of artificial blood, supercharged and potent, that turned anyone into a powerful warrior. Wampyr were strong, fast, self-regenerating, and drank fresh human blood.

Bodhi preferred to take her blood directly from the source.

"Send in the fucking clones," she groaned. "Got any spare? I skipped breakfast."

"I have a commission for you," Irenicus said. He handed her a disc. "Destroy this after you've memorised the contents. It's a dossier on several choices. Find one of these espers, capture them, and bring them to me alive."

Bodhi pocketed the tech. "Fine, brother. You owe me."

Irenicus knew that human science had reached its limits with the alien stardrive. It was time to try esp. He'd given his sister a list of potent rebel espers to work with. And if the one Bodhi captured was strong enough, Irenicus would carry out more experiments.

It was always time for more experiments.


	2. Cold Rock: Gorion

Cold Rock was hell. Gorion's throbbing headache and the blood dripping from his left nostril were the least of his concerns.

They'd sought to overthrow the Empire's brutal control and bring freedom to the planet Cold Rock, only the Empire's soldiers were crushing them. It was likely they'd also been betrayed from within in some way.

Gorion's psi-storm beat against the huge battle machines and tides of marines coming their way. He was an esper, a strong one. He was born on the streets of Golgotha and spent a childhood escaping imperial forces who'd capture and brainwash anyone with esp they found. By rare good fortune, he contrived to become a librarian's apprentice and keep his gifts hidden. When he was young he was a rebel. Middle-aged, he thought he'd retired by taking a job in the planet-sized and politically neutral Tartaros Library. And now, against his better judgment, he'd come as an old man to fight at his old friend Keldorn's side.

Gorion hoped at least he had kept his child safe. Little Imoen. She wasn't his daughter by blood, but he and his friend Dan Winthrop had rescued her and brought her up. After Dan's death there was only him. The little girl with a ready gap-toothed smile and strawberry pigtails had grown into a wired-up cyberrat flying through the digital world, somewhere in the depths of Golgotha's vast underbelly. Gorion and Dan had looked after another child as well for a time, but Imoen was the one who'd stayed with them. _Stay safe, Imoen. Be safe wherever you are now._

He scanned the battlefield. Time to make his last blow against the Empire count.

"Go!" Gorion screamed, and the psi energies ripped out of his body to make it so. Emotions and raw telekinetic force seized his allies for their retreat. It was important that Gorion's companions, including the legendary professional rebel Keldorn Firecam, live to fight another day. For the people of the Empire to have even a chance of freedom, Gorion had to save as many of his friends as he could.

One old man against the Imperial High Guard ...

Gorion walked out into the Cold Rock wilderness, his psi storm blowing around him.

Two Imperial starship cruisers. Four tank carriers. Three regiments of ground troops. Fires scorching the planet, infernos burning what was left of the rebel settlements.

Gorion gathered his mind and aimed at the first starcruiser, to buy his friends a chance of escape. His poltergeist's energies crackled around the C-class seams, seeking a way in.

But he'd missed that the marines were already on top of him. The disrupter blast seared toward him, a bright painful beam.

 _Told you, Dan, there's always a light at the end of the tunnel ..._

 _... And usually it's a train._

Instinctively, Gorion had his hand up to shield himself. It wouldn't do anything. No tech or psi could beat disrupter fire.

But something, someone, was singing in a woman's voice.

 _Except for Me, my dear Gorion._

The disrupter beam burst around him in a haze of light. It split apart at the point his raised hand commanded. He was unscathed.

Gorion's rage lost control. The flames of his mind first ripped the marines apart, and he flung everything inside himself above into the sky.

The psi storm tore apart the starcruiser rivet by rivet with the fury of a billion espers. It crackled with lightning and fell from the sky streaming smoke. Gorion gathered it up in his mind, powerful enough to do anything, burning like a dying star.

He flung the C-class into the other cruiser. Ship's crew and ship's espers screamed and died, and their souls were devoured by the power that was in him.

 _This is not my power._

At the corner of Gorion's awareness, shadowed, cloaked before he even knew it himself, a small ship escaped Cold Rock. Some rebels would fight another day.

 _You are ..._ Gorion asked the presence that gripped him, like a vague impossible memory of his mother long ago.

 _Don't you know?_ the voice sung. _I am the Mater Mundi. The patron saint of all espers. Too long, my children, too long are you dying._

Gorion knew the pain of espers in the Empire. Espers were property, not people. Hunted, tormented, tortured, brainburned, brainwashed, broken down to component parts, enslaved. The Mater Mundi showed it to him. The rage he felt fuelled the psi-storm that batted Empire tanks aside like dust in the wind. Unstoppable fires broke out in a thousand places through the invading army.

But the candle that burns the brightest lasts the least ...

Seams traced with fire burst on Gorion's own body, dividing his flesh as he'd done to the starcruiser. It wasn't in the nature of humans to handle such energies.

The Mater Mundi, Mother of All Souls, was the most powerful telepath ever created. Secret founder of the underground. So they said. At rare and amazing times she reached out to her children and made them her avatars, for as long as their minds and bodies could bear the strain.

He'd seen the smile on the face of the tiger, Gorion thought. Countless Empire troops rushed in like a horde of ants to fill the void, even as the psi storm flared and many died. There were many more. Marines were expendable.

There was no doubt that the Empire had won Cold Rock. But he'd sold his life dearly, and that was all Gorion had wished for.

Like the snuffing of a candle, the fire of the Mater Mundi departed from Gorion's frame.

Gorion remembered that his rebel friends had escaped. He remembered Imoen as a child, a guilty sugar-frosted smile on her face after she'd snuck enough candy to make her ill for a week. But in fact Imoen was perfectly fine afterward.

Gorion saw a blinding light as his body tore itself apart from the inside out.

And then he saw nothing at all. Not even darkness.


	3. Pie in the Empress' Court: Imoen

The Empress Lionstone sat in state on the Iron Throne. She was a tall sharp-featured woman, with a fall of golden hair behind her cold cruel bare face. As per custom, her face was kept clear of all cosmetics and veils. People liked to know who ruled over them.

The court was themed a frosty winter today. Delicate icicles with glinting razor blades within them clustered on the ceiling, occasionally falling on anyone who stood in the wrong place. Last time, gossip said Lionstone had a jungle environment with live alligators installed. They'd eaten a poor bastard of a servant. Lionstone loved her little jokes.

The Family representatives shivered in the cold. Few of them were dressed for it. Those of higher status had felt free to snatch cloaks and scarves from anyone lesser, in a hilariously undignified scrabble. Now aristocrats of all shapes and sizes blew on their blue fingers and bounced up and down to keep warm. Lionstone preferred to keep her subjects on their toes. The Empress herself had plenty of thermals built into her armoured outfit, and the gaggle of naked brainburned maids sprawled at her feet didn't feel anything.

As Imoen Winthrop watched the scene unfold before her, she could've giggled at how silly the aristos all looked, a bunch of shivering blue peacocks getting goosebumps on their goosebumps below their thin silks and satins, but today's business was a little more serious than that.

She'd run a great hack into the Empress' own security system, if she did say so herself as one of the best cyberrats in the galaxy. It'd taken a lot of work to get here. She peered out at everything from the seventy-eight full digital feeds of everything and everyone. If a fleck of earwax dripped from the ear of some flabby aristo, the Empress' system knew it even before he started scratching. Imoen knew it too.

Joys of being a cyberrat, Imoen thought. Mega-hit cola and sugar pumped straight into your veins, totally wired in every direction and dimension, plugged into the system like some all-seeing eye of God.

"Listen up, people." Everyone sprung to attention at the sound of the Empress' voice. "First up: the alien invasion. We have at least two hostile species out there and headed our way. Don't panic. We beat the Hadenmen and we'll beat these alien bastards.

"But these dark times mean we'll all have to tighten our belts. General Eltan," she announced, and the thickset man stepped forward. The commander of the Empire's military didn't look like a total eejit, Imoen thought: Cornelius Eltan's rep was that ordinary soldiers liked him. The media loved his plain speaking and his ever-present thick cigars. And the way he blew up and shot apart and scorched aliens and clones and espers and rebels was just _dazzling_. Imoen stuck out her virtual tongue at him, not that the guy saw or knew. "Eltan's in charge of space defences. You answer to him, or you answer to me."

Something between a whisper and a shudder drifted among the aristos and the Members of Parliament.

"On the home front we have the Jesuit Corps, here to keep human religion for humans." Imoen rolled her eyes. The Church of Christ the Warrior was big nowadays. Death to all heretics, hold the communion wine. There were other religions in the Empire, but they kept quiet about it. Imoen and her father Dan belonged to a religion much older than the established Church: a people who'd survived slavery, scattering, and holocausts and lived to tell the tale, even if often they'd had to live in the underground. "Meet Cardinal Belt. He'll be recruiting our Jesuit commandos."

Imoen'd heard that heresy trials were stepped up lately, too. Be rich and publicly repentant, and you got off with a large chunk of small change donated to the Church. Be poor or fail to repent, and the state could send you to the Church's judgment and penalties. It was really easy to commit heresy these days.

"Next order of business: the new stardrive. Our scientists have discovered a new stardrive more powerful than any of the ones in the old D-class ships. Feel free to applaud," the Empress said. She interrupted the scattered claps just after they'd begun. "This stardrive's our key weapon against aliens and rebels. Any questions?"

A willowy dark-skinned woman stepped forward. Imoen thought that the elaborate black dress with two enormous lacy panniers around her hips made the aristo look like a wedding-cake on its way to a funeral, but that was high fashion for you. "With respect, Empress," she drawled, "we need to know which Family is to receive the honour of producing the stardrive. House DeVir would like to present the alternative of collaboration. DeVir's industries are formidable, as are many other Families'. We are willing to join a partnership. The Empire will benefit from shared expertise." She bowed formally, her cloud of silver hair falling over her face.

"Already decided. Step back, DeVir," the Empress said. "House Silvershield will receive the contract. Over the years, Entar, we have been pleased by the products of your factory worlds. Continue to please us in this."

A pale silver-haired man walked to the Iron Throne. Despite his aged look he was still straight-backed and supple, as if he'd had countless rejuvenation treatments. Only aristos could afford those. Entar Silvershield accepted the contract from the Empress' own hand and returned to his family. One middle-aged trophy wife, plump and pretty in pink; one sulky teenage daughter, wearing a sleek silvery blue gown that had to cost more credits than Imoen'd ever seen in her life; and an assortment of hangers-on like bottom feeders clipped onto a shark.

A cough suddenly echoed through the hall. It wasn't the Empress. A gawky woman with metallic hair and fluorescent layers of silk that didn't suit her made her way forward. Her bow was very brief. "Nalia de'Arnise, Empress. I speak for everyone who needs to know," she said. "There are rumours that the stardrive isn't a human invention at all, but was captured from an alien ship. Are we going to use such risky alien technology in our military vessels?"

"Nalia de'Arnise. You've been misinformed." The Empress' face was frosty as the artificial weather in her court. "Our stardrive was developed by Imperial science to anticipate the aliens. It pays to be paranoid."

"But some of the sources for this rumour are very high level," the noblewoman protested. She glanced over at some of the Members of Parliament as if she expected support from that direction, though people around her were already backing far away. "If you could just give us your information ..."

The Empress raised a hand, and a forcefield near her throne dropped down. Imoen hadn't even spotted it herself, nor the shape inside it. Now there was a seven-foot statue of an overly muscled man in jet black armour by the Empress' side, only Imoen knew he wasn't a statue. The armour covered him head to toe, masking his face. A gigantic sword was strapped to his back, and a disrupter hung at his side. He was the only man permitted to carry energy weapons in the Empress' presence. Her Warrior Prime, called the Widowmaker when he wasn't in earshot. His interests were the Empress' interests. Sarevok.

This was a surprise. Imoen held off doing anything else for the moment, in case there were more things she hadn't spotted yet.

"You've publicly implied that your Empress has lied to you," Lionstone announced. The chilling space around Nalia de'Arnise grew even wider, rats fleeing the impending disaster area. "This means, of course, that my champion will have to fight for my honour."

A white-haired man stepped forward. Despite his poor fashion sense in the puce lace brocades he wore, he moved like he'd been a warrior in his time. "My daughter rescinds and begs your forgiveness, Empress. She does not speak for her Family on this."

Imoen realised with a shock that this old guy was famous. They said that the de'Arnise lord was the one honest aristocrat in the whole Empire, though Imoen knew even an honest one could be trusted about as far as he could piss against the wind. You couldn't be an aristo without walking past countless espers and clones and unpeople dying in slavery and worse.

They said, though, that the de'Arnise Family refused to make or buy clones, so maybe they did better than some others.

"As the Lady Nalia's nearest male relative, the challenge is yours. Someone get this man a sword," the Empress said.

"Father!" Nalia shrieked. Two guards already had their hands on her shoulders and forced her down. "You can't do this!"

De'Arnise accepted a blade from one of the guards. He tested its weight. "Lionstone, I speak for myself," he said. "I remember your father, the Emperor Lion. I'm one of few of his inner circle left. Most you've killed. Some buried themselves in the underground. They're ashamed of what the Empire's become under you. You're the worm in the fruit, the canker in the bud, the snake in the grass. Thirteen generations before you, and then the throne goes to a complete bloody psychopath. I remember you as a child, Lionstone. If I'd known then what you'd grow into, I'd ... probably have let you live. I always had a soft spot for children."

The Warrior Prime slipped his claymore from his back. It barely made a sound as it hissed from his scabbard, all oil and steel. A dueling arena cleared in a circle on the snow. De'Arnise fell silent as the Warrior Prime advanced on him, black-armoured and implacable. It was a hell of a way to die.

De'Arnise wasn't bad for an old guy, Imoen thought. What she knew about swordfighting was strictly street-level—stick 'em with the pointy end, use every dirty trick in the books, and kick them where it hurt. But his stance and the way his sword deflected the Warrior Prime's blows by never being in the same place twice had to mean he was pretty good. His daughter was on her knees in an empty circle in the snow, watching with a pale face below her layers of pancake makeup.

Of course, pretty good wasn't good enough for the Warrior Prime. Sarevok pressed the old lord two steps in, drew his sword to the left, and then quickly and sharply cut his shoulder. With de'Arnise's sword arm failing, it wouldn't be much of a fight.

But the Warrior Prime was a butcher. Lionstone loved that about him. De'Arnise fell to his knees, still trying to hold onto his sword. A quick death was the last thing the Widowmaker would give him. The Warrior Prime sliced pieces off him while Imoen shuddered. Bloody gobbets landed in the snow around them, one by one.

Imoen was sure de'Arnise had to be dead now—a lump of bloody flesh lying still on the snow—but the butchery continued. The Warrior Prime put on a good show for the Empress' money. He didn't stop, until the bloody bones were unrecognizable. It hadn't taken him long.

 _Yuck_. Imoen wondered if she was throwing up really, not just virtually. The Warrior Prime stepped back to the Empress' side. Nalia de'Arnise knelt weeping on the snow.

"You monsters!" she screamed at the Empress and the Warrior Prime, but they affected not to notice.

"Normally, the assets of a traitor are forfeit," the Empress said. "But we can be magnanimous. House Roenall inherits de'Arnise ... in accordance with the current betrothal contract between Isaea Roenall and Nalia de'Arnise."

The aristo woman looked up from her place in the snow, a dawning horror in her eyes. "You planned this!" she accused. "You all knew this was going to happen!"

A young aristocrat with a smarmy smile and shiny pants walked up behind her. "Nalia, my dear, you're overwrought. In view of our love I can forgive your association with traitors." He bent over slightly beside her and his tight-fitting trousers squeaked. What the pants clung to wasn't nearly as impressive as he seemed to believe, Imoen thought. "Our marriage will shortly proceed, and you will continue your role of managing the de'Arnise estates ... only it will be under my supervision, of course."

Nalia de'Arnise got up from the ground. "I know dirty work when I see it," she spat. "Isaea, you're scum, you're slime, and calling you a bastard would be an insult to bastards everywhere! The day I marry you is the day you die!"

The aristo woman was dragged away by guards, and Imoen didn't see what happened to her after that. Time was ticking. Now Imoen could feel things wriggling in her cyberspace that could batten onto what she'd done and unravel the thread, and her allies'd be getting impatient. The Warrior Prime had skulked back to the Empress' side as she sat on her throne.

"Dealing with treachery is always unpleasant," the Empress said sardonically, "but needful. Further business: House Bhaal is outlawed. They are all filthy traitors to the Empire. Their properties and worlds are hence confiscated, and given to House Cyric. Let us hope that this House shall show themselves more faithful.

"In addition," the Empress said, and no other tone echoed in the snowy court than her frosty voice. "The black ban applies to all descendants of House Bhaal. Including the bastards. They're all outlawed, with a hefty bounty on their heads. Turn them in. No world in the Empire may shelter them."

Imoen couldn't care less about some aristos who'd fallen on the wrong side of their pet bloodthirsty tyrant. What she cared about was her mission. And so she didn't pay any attention at all to the holo flickering a series of images of House Bhaal's bastard children.

She took a last-minute scan of the area for any impending security threats—as a cyberrat, you could always get caught just as easy for being too cautious as too daring, Imoen reminded herself—and finished her hack.

The Empire had invented instantaneous matter teleportation some time ago, but the immense power costs were prohibitive.

That prohibition didn't apply when it was the Empress' own systems you were drawing power from.

The six underground rebels appeared suddenly in a semicircle around the Empress, and opened up with their flamethrowers. Screams and chaos erupted in the court, and even the Warrior Prime could not advance around the wall of fire. One of the rebels moved close to the Empress, covering her. Lionstone gestured at her guards and the maids to stand down.

"That's better!" Alora One said. Or at least, Imoen thought she was Alora One. Alora One's five sisters kept a wary eye on everything around their perimeter. "Tell your guards and that nasty Warrior Prime to drop everything!"

The Empress was perfectly calm. "Do as she says, boys," she drawled coldly. She watched the six clones. They were all Aloras, six pink-haired women manufactured to suit the same template. Clones who'd escaped their status as property and come to fight in the rebellion. Alora One through to Alora Six: identical sisters, family, lovers, a bond closer than anything else in the universe.

Imoen considered all the Aloras her friends. So when they'd volunteered for this mission, she hadn't the strength to say no.

"You have one of our friends," Alora One said. "We've come to take her back. The esp-blocker within your Throne. She was a living person, and her brain's still alive. That's how you and all the Empire make esp-blockers. You hurt our friends the espers, and then you use them as raw material to block other espers' powers. You take the living minds of our friends and make them suffer forever. Hand her over."

With the flamethrower still trained on her, the Empress tapped out a private code on her wrist. Imoen watched for signs of betrayal. The back of the Iron Throne slid open, extruding a secret compartment. It wasn't much, just a translucent cube the size of a human head that held brain tissue. Inside it was a tormented soul.

Alora Two picked it up. "Goodbye, friend!" she called. "We'll keep on fighting to make the world a better place." She flung the esp-blocker into the air, and aimed her flamethrower to melt it down into ash.

"You wouldn't dare kill me," the Empress said. She was playing for time: she would know that the Aloras' flamethrowers couldn't last forever. "Every last one of you would be wiped out."

Alora Four's eyes were cold. "No, we won't kill you. We'd like you to live and see your corrupt Empire fall to its knees. You're not a nice person, Lionstone. None of us are happy with you. You're just plain mean. So we thought today we'd show you exactly what we think of you."

She reached into her backpack and brought out a foil-wrapped pie. With aplomb, she flung the pie at the Empress. It hit her square in the face. Bright golden custard dripped all the way down from Lionstone's outraged expression to her fancy outfit. Pastry flakes settled on Lionstone's shoulders like dandruff.

"If we killed you, the next Emperor'd kill plenty of us, and that wouldn't be nice at all," Alora Four said. "But reprisals for a pie in the face? Now that'd just be petty, Lionstone. Goodbye and goodnight, all!"

That was the cue for Imoen to work her teleportation trick again. She flexed her commands. It should've worked.

 _Hello, Imoen_ , she read. Two stark, utterly unexpected words hit her screen. Imoen panicked. The systems were crashing down around her. The Imperial AIs were reaching their silvery tendrils back into her hack, and no matter what she tried, she couldn't get back control.

She needed to get the Aloras out of there!

 _You've been very unwise, Imoen_ , that same anonymous source wrote at her. She didn't understand. She couldn't grasp at the entity taunting her, which had vanished into cyberspace again. So she mustered all the power she had access to and sent it at teleport, teleport, teleport—as if her willpower could grab the Aloras out of there.

 _Teleport already!_

It didn't work. And one of the Aloras' flamethrowers ran out of fuel. The Empress' maids scented weakness and jumped.

The Aloras drew their swords and moved with the perfect unison that only clones could achieve. They defended themselves with skills built from the underground resistance, with the desperation to fight for their friends.

But it wasn't enough. Imoen wept and screamed as she mashed the teleport controls. Now the Empress' maids were among the Aloras, and there was nothing she could do anyway but watch.

The maids were brainburned to have one thought in their heads: protect the Empress at all costs. They fell on the Aloras with steel claws and iron teeth, caring nothing for their own injuries. The Warrior Prime was there before Imoen noticed him move. His sword cut Alora Three in half before she had a chance to scream.

Alora One was lost below a pile of maids. Blood surged from in between them.

The Empress had taken a long concealed dagger from her sleeve. Imoen shrieked, though of course she couldn't be heard. Quick as lightning, Lionstone grabbed Alora Four's head and drew a deep red smile across her throat. "Burn in hell, traitor," Lionstone hissed. Blood soaked the snow.

The maids hadn't just brought Alora Six down now. As they fell on her, they feasted, their mouths red with blood and flesh. Conditioned cannibalism, a psychological terror weapon. It was working. Another Alora was trying to duel the Warrior Prime. She failed. She died faster than de'Arnise had done.

The Empress brought down the last Alora to the snow, holding her dagger against her chest.

"Tell me who sent you, traitor," Lionstone said.

"I'll never tell. But there are more like us, and we'll see you go down," Alora Five gasped out.

With a blissful smile, Lionstone slid the dagger into Alora's heart. And Imoen's feed of the court suddenly wrenched away from her.

Everything was dark and there were tears soaking wet on her cheeks. The bright colours of the aristocrats, the court, the Aloras fighting for their lives. It all seemed like a dream, but Imoen knew it wasn't. She ripped out the nutrient tube in her arm and set the self-destruct command on her gear. This small dark basement was set below a minor office building in the outskirts of the Parade of the Endless. But Imoen couldn't trust the cover would hide her any more.

 _Hello, Imoen_ , someone had said. And she didn't know who the hell they'd been.

Imoen headed to the lifts, wiping an impatient hand across her face. Get out of here. She hefted her illegal disrupter in her right hand, hoping she wouldn't have to use it.

Fat chance. The lift opened the moment before she reached it. Imoen rushed forward and shoved her disrupter at the first of the Empress' soldiers—

But the one man she saw in the flickering light wasn't in uniform. He held up his hands and a pair of curved swords clattered to the ground. Medium height, lithely muscled, high cheekbones, good-humoured dark eyes.

"Isn't the password something about angels?" he said cheerfully. "I can never remember these things. Blue angel something something about moonlight. The underground sent me, and I'm here to help."

"You do look a little short to be a guard," Imoen admitted, still holding the disrupter in his face. "But the pale harlequin won't bring his tea set tomorrow. Crap, if there's one thing I hate about the underground it's remembering the passwords. Who the hell are you anyway?"

"Yoshimo. Feel free to call me _the_ Yoshimo," he said. He tried to flash Imoen a charming grin despite the disrupter in his face. She thought she might actually start to like this fellow. "Daring rogue about town, intermittent rebel, rescuer of damsels in distress, and very keen to get on with it due to the Empire forces breathing down our necks. If we live, I'll show how I can dance on the head of a pin as well."

"And I'm the best cyberrat you'll ever meet," Imoen boasted, "so let's can the self-promos for now and get out of here."

"Your conveyance awaits, fair lady." Yoshimo was not actually standing in the lift itself. Imoen was surprised to see him surrounded by only a set of cables and bare concrete. "Best not to take the elevator proper. It's so easy for people to trap you in a solid metal box." With smooth movements, he picked up his swords from the ground. Yoshimo studied the metal cables for a moment and sheathed one of the two blades. "Hold on."

Imoen leaned into his arm and wrapped her other hand firmly around Yoshimo's waist. She thought she'd figured out what he planned to do. The blade of his sword sheared through a solid metal cable in an instant, which shocked her.

And then they were off. The cable released the counterweight and they careened toward the very top of the office building.

"Monofilament edge," Yoshimo explained with a wink and a smile as they flew upward. A blade with an edge only a molecule wide that cut through everything it had a mind to, as long as its power lasted. Very expensive, very illegal, and very deadly.

Then they were up at the top of the shaft. Imoen swung herself to a lintel. She was quick and agile, and she was a cyberrat who still liked action in the real world. The other rebel followed. A cut of the monofilament edge later and they were out on the roof. She shivered as the cold night air hit her through her coat. It was easy to lose track of things like temperature when you were lost in cyberspace.

Yoshimo and Imoen paced to the edge of the concrete roof. A whole set of lights below glinted up at them like malignant eyes, dizzying in the sheer scale of action involved. A siren howled suddenly, and was then cut off.

"Troop transport there, two tanks to the south-west, and grav-sleds parked in the east. An entire company of the Empress' men. You must've done something important," Yoshimo said, a note of admiration in his voice.

Imoen shuddered. The Empire forces were taking the building like an army of black ants. They'd move on floor by floor, securing it as they went, terrorising all the innocent office workers. They'd probably have found her already by now if not for Yoshimo. They would be up here very soon.

Yoshimo unrolled a long loop of cord from around his waist. A thin, strong, microfibre. It whistled softly in the air, and snaked downward to catch below.

"My swords, your disrupter, a rope. Have we any other assets?" he asked. Imoen shook her head. This was part of being in the rebel underground: you had to travel light, get out quick, and mourn friends when you had the time.

"Then we take a grav-sled out of here," Yoshimo said. "I see they've posted guards. We must fight, win, and fly out. And so I rescue the damsel from her tower."

"Like hell I'm a damsel," Imoen said, and set onto the rope first.

The soldiers weren't expecting an attack from above. Imoen saw their eyes turn to her at the last minute below the lights of their command. She landed and fired as quickly as she could. The guards' force shields were raised and her disrupter beam bounced off. She'd expected that. She ducked for cover.

Yoshimo leapt down in the middle of the chaos. Disrupters could blast through almost anything, but in the end so many battles came down to cold steel. He sliced down the two guards with professional precision, and Imoen raced behind him. More soldiers had most definitely noticed.

The Imperial grav-sled powered on. It had its own force shield, and the disrupter beams from the enemy went wild around it. Yoshimo fired the engine and they were off.

He was a good pilot—Imoen should know. They went on a series of daredevil turns through the most thickly clustered office buildings, risking life and limb scattered across a glass-and-concrete facing. Some of the Empire soldiers chasing them met that fate, crashing and burning like incendiary fireflies.

Imoen hefted her disrupter and waited for a chance. She yelled out to Yoshimo, and he lowered their force shield just long enough to let her shoot. Imoen wasn't aiming at the pursuers: her disrupter sheared through the top two floors of a skyscraper, and it fell crashing onto the Imperials. She hoped there hadn't been many people in there, but it was their lives or hers.

She heard Yoshimo laugh wildly as they left their pursuers far, far behind, and joined in. The grav-sled dialled back the speed to something slightly less death-defying, and clung to shadows to stay hidden.

"I'm outta shots until the energy crystal recovers," Imoen confessed.

"Not that you need more. Fine shooting there, Tex." Yoshimo eyed her curiously. "I heard your father fought by Keldorn Firecam's side. Is that one true?"

"Yeah," Imoen admitted. Her father Gorion'd made a lot of rebel friends in his time, and they were always turning up in the oddest places. She knew her adoptive fathers would never have approved of her joining the underground. But Dan and ol' Gorion had brought her up to be too much like them: she couldn't look away when she saw something was wrong. "He fought with the legendary Keldorn Firecam."

Imoen wouldn't say it aloud, especially to the underground, but she felt nothing but a sick disappointment with the legendary Keldorn Firecam. The professional rebel had been at it since he was young, a very long time ago. He'd fly into a planet, raise people up in a rebellion, and get a lot of men and women and children killed. After he inevitably lost, the Empire forces would crack down harder than ever on the locals. Since Cold Rock, there hadn't been one substantiated rumour of Keldorn Firecam's activity. He'd probably died in some anonymous mass grave. Imoen was almost glad that meant fewer people pestering her, as if the one worthwhile thing her father did in all his life was meet Keldorn Firecam.

"Your father was an esper, I heard," Yoshimo said breezily. "The polter who rescued all those prisoners from Halcyon IV. The things that group did to the engines ..."

"That's right," Imoen said. Halcyon IV was even a mission her father had led! It was amazing what damage a polter could do to a starship's engines just by using his powers in small ways around high-precision instruments. Gorion and the other rebels had hijacked the ship, snuck the political prisoners to escape pods, and left the prison ship in a state of complete and utter confusion pending immediate explosion.

In the time since then, the Empire forces had improved their security, lest another esper pull the same trick. Imoen liked to think it was a personal compliment to Gorion.

"The same polter was the one at Cold Rock, I think," Yoshimo said. "That was a terrible battle. Your father's part in it was particularly splendid."

It was also the one where Imoen had lost Gorion. Where there hadn't been any survivors to speak of.

"I heard he destroyed two starcruisers that day," Yoshimo said, and suddenly Imoen didn't trust herself to speak. There'd been hardly any survivors. So how did he ...?

But some tensing of her muscles must have given her thoughts away.

Imoen wasn't even fast enough to see Yoshimo turning. He was pretty good at what he did. She felt the cold press of the hypospray on her neck and tried to fight off the hands on her. But above her was darkness and below her was a dizzying whirlpool of stars, and she swam down into blackness.

 _Damn it, Imoen_ , Imoen thought, before the lights in her head turned out entirely.

—


	4. Petty Crime Doesn't Pay: Vai

Officer Vai, of the Golgotha police force, headed down the long hall with pride. One hell of a successful raid. Looking at her, people would have seen a middle-rank local officer, with only a small rank badge pinned to the lapel of her coat. She was average height, muscular and blocky, with a face like an eager bulldog and a flamethrower scar burnt deep into her left cheek. A fall of bright red hair swept back from her face, drawn into a short plait.

Her sergeant updated her on the details in the other location. They'd collared all the head men on their list, with most of their henchmen to boot. Only a few small guppies escaped the net, and Vai fully intended to catch those. She listened to a quick message that one of Mr Melmotte's thugs had a particularly distinct deformity.

Her beat was theft and drugs, in one of the working-class districts in Golgotha. A lot of factory workers who mostly just wanted to feed their families, and an underclass who grifted and stole to survive. Vai couldn't stand people who stole from those who had hardly more than they did: reminded her of crabs in a bucket, pulling down the weakest links just because they could. Vai also couldn't stand drug peddlers. She hated the fact that aristocrats from the wealthy districts could take anything they liked and snort it where the sun don't shine and get away with it, but there was nothing she liked better than a day where she and her team got to arrest the sort of street scum who sold slocca to schoolchildren.

One of Vai's team had a lucky break. Browsing a pawnshop in plain clothing, he discovered an engraved item stolen from a recent burglary. The pawnshop owner was a fence. Vai and her team investigated further, and found the pawnshop was one of a chain owned by the same man, all making stolen goods disappear.

They raided the pawnshops, closed them down, impounded the stock, and searched for the rightful owners. But when Vai and her team were done, they'd a lot of leftover goods. Vai was proud that her group had the lowest rates of evidence theft and bribery in the sector.

Among the unclaimed goods were a lot of personal jewellery and small objects d'art, many of them more valuable than you'd expect. Owners not possible to find. Nineteen cases where a name engraved on some object could be traced back to a person, and where that person was no longer available on Golgotha.

Vai sent her beat cops out for gossip and rumours, and they came back with the info that the pawnbroker was all but in bed with Tiberius Melmotte, a big criminal fish rich enough to seem beyond the law. He liked to recruit plenty of staff to do his dirty work. The guy had a certain charisma; his men tended to be loyal under interrogation. Probably paid the gofer who made his coffee more than twice her salary.

Melmotte was involved, police gossip said, in the emigration game. Plenty of politically suspect people found Golgotha wasn't the right climate for their health lately. Vai was loyal to the Empire because she'd sworn an oath, but you would have to be stone blind, deaf as a post, and a total idiot if you didn't notice that plenty of ordinary people were feeling the strain. As far as Jessa Vai was concerned, if harmless sorts whose main crime was a bit of sympathy for espers and clones wanted to leave, stopping them was a low priority.

Not that there weren't esper and clone terrorists, of course. Like that esper monster who reanimated dead children as his puppets, in the news about a month ago. The Empire needed to stay strong to go after that kind.

Nineteen names. At least seventeen out of nineteen cases where the person was on a list for suspicious behaviour. Not that Vai was supposed to have clearance for that, but her cyber specialist Jehoshaphat Jansen could sweet-talk any AI into opening up all its best codes and thanking him for the privilege. Implication: they'd left Golgotha and some very personal objects in a hurry, and Melmotte was the link.

"Boss," she heard her sergeant say over the line. The tone of Kumar's voice told her that everything she'd suspected, and hoped against, was real. "You need to see this."

Nigel Kumar was a good officer, a veteran cop who'd been in longer than Vai. He'd seen more than his share of tough situations. He sounded disturbed. Vai stilled her face and kept walking, slowly and evenly.

Melmotte's business was near the starport. A deceptively short and widely sprawling building, kept clean and modern. Tunnels underneath it could have been used to smuggle people to a starship. Vai walked below a gleaming metal ceiling, in a large room with seamless fittings, and tried not to feel trapped. Ornamental floral designs were carved into the walls at very regular intervals.

She took in the details of the fittings, and noticed the holes concealed in the petals.

Two of her men held open thick steel doors. Vai took in the strength of the lock and the way that when fit together they would completely seal the room. She walked all the way down a cool, odourless hall, large enough to hold hundreds of people. The floral designs stared impassively down at her. There was only one entrance and exit; two more of her team waited for her at the end in the same way, with the same seamless heavy steel doors. The air was even colder here.

Vai purposely stopped herself from shivering. She trod down a set of plasteel steps, grimy and not cleaned so well this time, and came to the mortuary.

It should have been too cold for there to be a smell. Steel and chrome lined the icy room, colder than a witch's tit. But, rancid and thick and coppery, the stench of old blood pervaded the air.

This hall was a vault. This hall was a charnel-house. The refugees paying to leave Golgotha ended up here.

Kumar had his blue kerchief over his mouth. He took Vai to an open vault. The bodies were stacked like so many lumps of meat. They'd died curled up and contorted, and Vai understood how.

People would pay through the nose for Melmotte to take them away, because they were desperate. They'd be directed to the hall with steel walls, and told to wait to be taken to the starship about to leave the planet. Then, the concealed gas jets would open up inside the ornamental metal flowers. There would be screaming and scratching against the walls, but no one would hear.

When they were all dead, Melmotte's men would comb the bodies for the valuables they carried on them, and sell those off for a little extra profit. And then the bodies themselves wouldn't go to waste.

The Empire had a profession whose name was a curse, outlawed everywhere, and yet the members of it were paid richly to continue their work. Cloneleggers. Body thieves. Ony the aristocratic Families were allowed to own clones, which left a lot of demand from others for body parts. Cloneleggers stole the dead and sold their organs, and in most cases you really didn't want to know how they got their raw material.

But knowing happened to be Vai's job, and she would not shirk it.

"Melmotte's a clonelegger." Vai mentally counted the body vats. Some would be empty, the merchandise already transferred. "How many do we have?"

"Thirteen of the vaults have occupants," Kumar said. And, Vai calculated, even one could stock a hefty amount of the dead. The vault she was by was open. On the top of it she could see a small body, tightly packed against the other shapes, and revised the numbers inside her head. Every murder was one too many. And here, adults and children who'd only come to seek refuge were betrayed and murdered in mass.

"We need identification of the bodies yesterday," Vai said tightly. She paged in the request to the pathology team—consisting of her own overworked pathologist, who usually covered accidents, and three others lent to her. She'd officially liaised with two larger, higher-ranked police squads on this. But it was Vai's own operation, and she was in command.

Vai steeled herself, looking at the full detail of the open vault. A woman with black curly hair rimed with frost lay bowed over herself, her arms locked around a child. There was a pink ribbon tied on the little girl's head. Mother and daughter, probably, with the same dark ashen skin under ice crystals and the same fear etched permanently into their faces. It burnt police officers out to see the tragedies day in and day out, but Vai believed in reminding herself why the job needed to be done.

She turned back and opened her comm link to Jansen, her cyber specialist. His face was sullen on the feed.

"Boss," he said, "I started poking into their systems, but I received new orders from above. Internal dropped in and picked it clean." He spread his hands innocently. If Vai knew Jehoshaphat Jansen at all, he'd have already made backups, but knew better than to talk on an open comlink.

Vai understood. She opened up her personal channel to higher command anyway.

"We've found the clonelegger's victims, sir. This area is my beat. Our role on the street can help find the living relatives," Vai offered, knowing it was futile. She didn't even know the senior official: a gaunt man who seemed grey all over, from his skin to his hair and moustache. If he'd ever been active in the field, she had never heard of him.

"There are no victims. There are only petty criminals," he said. "Do you misunderstand your orders, officer?"

"Some of them were children," Vai responded, choking down her anger.

"Children of traitors. Let me repeat, officer. Do you misunderstand your orders?"

There was no choice. The clonelegger preyed on dissidents who wanted to leave the Empire, and for that crime their deaths were no longer murder. Even the deaths of their families. It was forbidden for the Empire's police force to inquire any further. Vai understood very well.

"Yes, sir."

"Your orders are to find the missing cloneleggers, whichever holes the rats may have crawled into. You are best suited for that task. Other aspects of the investigation are pushed to higher levels. Have we made ourselves clear?"

He meant that there was to be no investigation of the clonelegger's clients. Some of them might be prominent citizens, after all. It wouldn't be politic to upset them. Not now, when their support might be needed for all sorts of reasons. Just another day in the Empire.

"Hunt down the other crooks, officer. You'll be pleased to know that policy says making an example out of these dregs will be good for the lower orders."

The official signed off. Vai saluted, ignoring her angry bile. She knew she'd done a good job of leading the raid to catch Melmotte with his trousers down, but there were always a few left. A circus midget, for one. For reasons best known to himself, Melmotte had hired a genetically modified freak as one of his thugs. There weren't many four-foot men running around in the Empire.

Rounding cloneleggers up and delivering them to the law was more than within Vai's preferred job description. The rest of it would wait.

"Secure the evidence, Kumar," she said. The top of the vat was drawn back across, over the faces of the little girl and her mother. Vai fully intended to ask Jansen, in person, exactly how much of the clonelegger's data he had retained. Until then, she had to work on the duties assigned to her. She'd sworn an oath to do so.

A good officer, in a darkening Empire.

—


	5. On the Run to the Underground: Montaron

Montaron hid in the alleyway between two hulking garbage tips, cursing the latest turns of his luck. Always bad. He called on a special hell for the officer bitch leading the capture. Damn them. Damn them all.

Monty was born a midget, genetically modified before birth to work in the family circus. People like him weren't born naturally any more. He'd had no choice. His parents never asked him whether he wanted to be a circus freak. As soon as he could, he ran away to the streets, and all but starved there. But Montaron's size meant he could get to places others couldn't in order to steal, and he was a lot stronger than most people expected. Then he discovered his true calling, which was beating the shit out of people.

If it hadn't been for Tiberius Melmotte, Monty would have stayed on the street living on whatever he could thieve. Melmotte took him in, gave him a place to stay, and let him learn how to fight. Monty was astonished that a man so wealthy and important actually talked to the people who worked for him, rewarding them when they did well. He gave Monty a sword custom-made for him and had him learn to use a gun. Monty worked as a thug, protecting Melmotte's enterprises from other gangs. He hadn't known about the clonelegging until a few months ago, but he'd kept working for Melmotte willingly. The crime boss was good to his people.

A rat scuttled over Monty's toes. He kicked it viciously, and it gave a loud screech as it hit the wall with a crunching noise. Then he heard other noises, footsteps and voices, as if someone was coming to investigate what the noise was. Lights flashed on, not a hundred metres away from him. He ran in the other direction.

Melmotte had a lot of contacts with the underground. It was where he recruited most of his customers from, after all. But the underground wouldn't approve of what he'd done to their sympathisers.

Montaron still knew enough to find his way to the rebels. They set up caches and safehouses far below Golgotha's surface, in the planet's vast sewer systems. Over the long history of attempting to give billions and billions of people sanitation, there were plenty of disused tunnels, dead ends, and deserted pipes full of rust and stinking of worse. It wasn't cheery. But for many escaped clones and espers, and rebellious cyberrats, it was home.

He ran for it, slipping below the shadows of a set of overhanging eaves. Down into an old waystation for Empire trains, disused now except for the rats. Over the rails and down into a massive pipe the size of several roads, where liquid slopped high enough to cover Monty's knees. He hoped it wouldn't get worse: his head was set a lot lower than most people's. It would be just his luck to drown in other people's shit.

He travelled through a giant labyrinth, backtracking when he had to, racking his brains to remember the route and guess the signs. Maybe he'd even get lucky. Montaron wasn't an esper or clone, but he was as much of a freak as anyone in the underground. Maybe the underground would willingly take him in.

Fat chance.

Monty stopped when he saw a rotting corpse on a noose, hung on the ceiling. The body swung back and forth, the feet sketching a circle in the air. He backed away from it cautiously, reaching for his sword. Probably a trap.

 _Definitely a trap_ , said a voice inside his head. The dead man's head snapped down to look at him, and Monty let out a shout of terror. He couldn't help it. The dead eyes were glowing yellow.

The dead man opened his mouth and roared. Montaron jumped back in the sewer water. His feet slipped on something and he fell back.

 _Yes, definitely a trap,_ echoed the voice in his head, and it wasn't his own thoughts telling him. _Definitely a trap, clonelegger, traitor._

Montaron fell, somewhere deep and dark and filthy, and he couldn't wake up from it. It was some damned dirty esper mind trick, he wasn't born yesterday and he knew enough for that, but he screamed and howled inside his head, and didn't even come close to breaking away from the darkness.

—

"He's awake," a voice said, with a disdain as if the speaker smelt something disgusting. There was a bad smell. Montaron thought it was probably himself. A red-haired woman stared coldly down at him. How long'd he been out? He rubbed his head, glaring around himself. A few espers in the underground uniform of spike bracelets, leather T-shirts, bandages, and missing body parts. A couple of clones with the same face if you discounted their wide assortment of battle scars, plenty of weapons at the ready. The woman who looked down at him was tall and gawky and plain, her pink mouth pursed like she was scraping a cockroach off her dinner.

He gave a start when he saw the three shapes that glowed, floating in the air before him. One a seven-foot tall naked man, with a depressingly perfect body in every detail. He quickly averted his eyes from the crotch. Then a large pair of balance scales, hung from a skeletal hand suspended from empty air. Third, a woman shape made up of water, standing in a pool with a waterfall flowing around her like trickling tears. Espers. It had to be fucking espers.

"Fucking espers," Montaron stammered. It was all he could think of. How long'd he been out? He couldn't even get to his feet.

"Two weeks," the redhead said, with the same look of disgust. Of course she was a fucking esper too.

"He is one of Melmotte's cloneleggers," the waterfall woman said, with a tinkling voice like the sound of a stream. It made Montaron want to puke. "What was his contribution to Melmotte's crimes?"

"I didn't join the rebellion for this," the redhead protested. "This man's mind is disgusting, if you can call him a man. Do any of you have any idea how disgusting his mind is? I'd rather bathe in a sewer. Then again, I've basically done that since I joined the rebellion. I didn't realise we were rebelling against baths."

"Nalia de'Arnise, you fled to the rebellion because no one else was willing to take you in," the naked man—Mr Perfect, Montaron mentally dubbed him—said. "And because no aristocrat would tolerate a concealed telepath in their midst."

"My father supported you for ages! He didn't even try to get a replacement heir, and hired espers from you people in secret to teach me everything," Nalia complained. "If you could be a little more grateful for all we did for you ..."

"Unfortunately, we're short-staffed." A cold, dry voice like bones cracking came from somewhere around the set of balance scales. "We were betrayed. Whether by a willing traitor or an interrogated prisoner, it matters not. All of us fought against the Empire, and we must consider the underground's very survival."

"Don't lecture me," Nalia snapped, "I was there and saw Sarevok the Widowmaker's troops blow us apart. I saw some of my friends— I fought as hard as anyone." She looked frostily down at Montaron. He clapped his hands to his head. He felt something, violent and horrible and inexplicable, tear his thoughts and memories apart.

He was a messenger, an errand-runner, a nobody, but Mr Melmotte himself came down to visit the gang and ask for everyone's names. For as long as they worked for him, Melmotte said, it was his business how they did. Monty thought he was hanging on only by the skin of his teeth—his size made people remember him on the streets—but it turned out that Melmotte noticed his loyalty after all.

There was a rival syndicate, sponsored by a high-up with plenty of bankroll, and Monty was listening when his immediate boss got the offer. He pretended to accept the bribe himself, enough to set him up for more than a year, and went straight off to tell, if he could even get an audience with the boss.

"You've done the right thing, Montaron," Mister Melmotte said, and even reached down to shake his hand. He'd somehow remembered his name. "What would you like for a reward? You'll find that there is little I won't do for people who serve me well."

"The only thing I want is to learn how to fight," Montaron said. He hated being pushed around, more than anything else. Most thugs tried to shove him around on the grounds of his size, though he knew he was stronger than he looked—and fast. He'd been gengineered that way. If he knew how to punch back, no one would dare make light of him any more. "It'd make me better fit to work for you, sir."

Melmotte looked at him. It seemed as if the man's hawk eyes took in every detail, and, strangely, approved. "In that case, you'll learn from my best. I'll watch your progress with interest," Melmotte promised.

Montaron learnt sword and gun from Melmotte's chief bodyguards. He was promoted to thug. He was thickly muscled and fast enough to make up for his lack of reach. He knew how to get in close and bring a bigger opponent down. And, when he had a gun, he knew how to make each shot count. Melmotte assigned him to be a bouncer at a brothel, security in a drug operation, and then at the starport working with smugglers. The cargo spaces Melmotte controlled just weren't enough to transport people.

Then Montaron found out what Melmotte really did to the people who paid him to get off-planet.

"Most people are fools, Montaron," he heard Melmotte say once. "What happens to a fool is nobody's business. We can all only afford to treat the people close to us well. Where would our friends be if we didn't profit from the others?"

Montaron continued his work, without thinking about the cloneleggers and their knives for too long. He managed to feel a sense of luck that he knew Melmotte treated his people well when they were wounded in his service. The clonelegger's friends don't go without organs when they need them.

"This man was one of Melmotte's thugs, and knew about the clonelegging for four months," Nalia de'Arnise announced. "He did nothing."

Montaron rolled forward, clutching his aching head. Then he looked up to glare at the rebels who would condemn him. Each one had probably participated in as many or more crimes as he had. The Empire would much rather have their heads on a stick than his. It wasn't fair, but life never was.

"Guilty," the water-woman esper declared, her smirking voice like a rolling stream. "Bring in the next."

The figure a pair of clones towed in was wrapped in chains. He slumped forward, a tangle of light brown hair covering bruises on his face. Because he was slumped over, it took Montaron some time to notice that the man was grotesquely tall and thin, a scarecrow. The sort who'd think he could step over Montaron with ease, until he realised how vulnerable kneecaps and hamstrings could be.

"You've called me back," he said in a high reedy voice, looking at the three esper leaders as if he wasn't afraid at all of their dazzling illusions. "What new havoc do you wish wreaked? What new contradictory orders are you to issue? What—"

"Xzar," interrupted the voice in the middle, the scales and the bone hand. Montaron blinked. It had turned into a brown rabbit with oddly scaly feet. He decided he wasn't going to care about stupid esper tricks. "You committed atrocities in our name. You killed and reanimated dead children. Your crimes set our cause back at least fifty years. People viewed us as terrorists."

The esper in chains shook his head slightly. "I reanimated the children, but I don't think I was the one who killed them. I used the raw material that was there. But it's hard to know for sure. After all, we've all caused unintended collateral damage in our time, haven't we? It's part of the fun." He laughed to himself. It went on for some time.

Not just an esper, a crazy esper, Montaron thought, and he could even see something very similar written on Nalia de'Arnise's scornful face.

"You're guilty of crimes against the rebellion," Mr Perfect said. "This is not for discussion. But you have a chance to redeem yourself. Meet your new partner, another traitor to us."

Montaron yelped. "Go with a crazy esper? Who the hell do you think I am?"

"Either succeed on this mission, or don't bother to come back," Mr Perfect went on without a pause. "Fail us, and you know what traitors deserve.

"Your assignment is to steal the new stardrive. It leaves the Empire's custody in two days. A Silvershield ship receives it at the starport, to be transported to their factory world. Intercept the drive. If you can't bring it to us, destroy it. With the new stardrive, the Empire fleet will be unstoppable.

"We suspect the drive is of alien origin. If we steal or destroy the prototype, this may hamper the Empire's attempts at duplication."

"And if," Xzar said, "you're wrong in any of this—it turns out that we were expendable."

"Correct," Mr Perfect said, and smiled like a toothpaste advert. It hurt to look at the glint on his teeth. "In fact you two are uniquely suited to this task. Montaron worked in the starport for Melmotte, and Xzar is a strong esper. Don't let his insanity bother you."

"Steal a fucking stardrive," Montaron said, with a cold despair. They may as well have ordered him to slit his own throat. It would be faster than suicide by Empire and a crazy esper combined.

Xzar pulled away from the clone holding his chain. He stood upright, and the metal links quivered around him. Montaron's jaw dropped as he saw the metal writhe and melt, wriggling away from the esper and pouring themselves into a liquid mass behind his back. The liquid twisted into quivering, complicated patterns that made Montaron's eyes hurt to look at them. They matched the black pattern that gradually appeared over the esper's face, a clown mask of unnatural dots and lines that covered skin and bruises. It was sickening.

 _Show-off_ , Montaron thought.

"You won't ever do that to me again," Xzar said. He raised a hand sharply; the melted chains fell to the floor in a pool of liquid. The esper leaders watched him impassively. He then looked down at Montaron.

Xzar grinned. "Monty? Is that what they call you? Come on, get up! I just know we're going to be good friends." The crazy esper clapped his hands and did a little dance.

Montaron slammed his head into his hands.

—

Monty walked quickly to keep up with the long-legged esper, hating every moment. His legs felt like jelly, since he'd missed out on two weeks. They walked past scorched walls and broken pipes. Often he'd stumble over a body or body part nobody had bothered to clean up. The underground was fucked all right, Montaron thought. If the Widowmaker was the one who came down on them, he was surprised they had anyone left at all.

Montaron panted as they climbed back to the streets, to a lean dark alleyway. On the Golgotha street it felt as if everything was suddenly normal again. It was pretty quiet here, the wrong time of day for anyone's attention. Montaron let his footsteps soften as he followed the esper. The crazy guy was muttering incomprehensible things to himself in an undertone, never even looking back. He didn't seem to notice Montaron any more.

Espers were supposedly always conditioned never to be violent against real people. Espers had to concentrate to use their inhuman powers.

Montaron chose his moment and flung himself at the esper's knees. The man went down with a high yelp. Montaron leapt on his chest to turn him over, cracking ribs, and pricked the man's throat with his sword. The esper fools hadn't even taken his weapon away from him. A line of blood ran down the esper's throat, and for once he was paying attention.

"Here's the way it's going to be," Montaron said. "I'm not doing a fucking stupid mission with a crazy esper. I'm getting out of here. You can help me, or die here. I should just put you out of everyone else's misery now. Then I'm getting the hell out of here so fast they won't see me ..."

Montaron's stomach roiled and a blinding pain struck through his skull. He fell to the side and vomited. A red-hot bolt lanced through his head. He was going to get out of here, damn it. He was—

"Fucking espers!" he cried out again. "What the fuck did you do to me?" He was crying from the pain and couldn't help it. He wanted to kill the esper and run away from everything but he couldn't even fucking move.

The crazy esper sat up. He reached out and tapped Monty's forehead with his fingertips. "It's a geas. You've had a telepathic compulsion put inside you. When you think about abandoning the mission, you'll suffer horribly. So change your mind."

"Fuck you! Who did this to me, that snotty cow?" Thinking about ramming a fist through the redhead's stupid aristocratic face seemed to make Montaron feel better, better enough to glare at the esper and hold on to his sword.

The crazy esper counted something on his fingers. "Dear Nalia's good, but if she were twice as good as she is she'd be about half as good as she thinks she is. No, it wasn't her skills. The esper leaders themselves implanted this compulsion in you, Montaron. Feel honoured.

"Our mysterious esper leaders are always hidden below a set of three shapes, different each time," Xzar said. "The archetypes and myths of Humanity's secret heart, the stories you know without even thinking about it. The Vitruvian Man. Lady of the Lake. The dragon with rabbit feet, or vice versa. Niobe weeping for her children. The Sleeping Bear. The Lightning Knight. The balance scales. The symbols ever shifting, the identities never known."

The ugly black patterns changed and writhed over the eper's skin.

"People think they're super-espers, among the first of us ever created," he said. "Their mental projections could come from anywhere, even anywhen. Perhaps they aren't even three. They never show their true faces ..."

Monty growled. _Get to the point, lunatic!_ "What about you?" he demanded. "Did they stick the same thing in your head to stop you running out?"

"No. Conditioning's never worked well on me. But don't you want to come and have an adventure, Montaron?" Xzar's eyes glinted a sickly green in the evening light. "Let's go steal the alien stardrive!"

The esper clutched his chest as he tried to get up, and groaned theatrically. "It hurts. You are good at what you do."

"I was hoping to break a few bones," Montaron retorted.

"Well—lead on now, Monty," Xzar said. "Find a nice place for us to rest the night."

—

A/N: I'm raising the rating to M after this chapter, for Irenicus related and other reasons. The story won't be in the standard view, but you can still see it if you add M stories to your filter.


	6. Bone Dagger: Imoen

It was the little bone daggers, driven deep inside Imoen's body. They stabbed and stabbed, and wouldn't ever come out. They were the real problem.

She had nothing left. She'd sworn a thousand times that nothing could ever make her betray her friends, but she was wrong. Burned, beaten, bones broken, drowned, drugged, and then came the mind techs. No matter how much she screamed that she wasn't an esper, not her, they wouldn't listen. They sawed the top of her skull off and fastened electrodes directly into her brain, taking her thoughts. She still dreamed of them. Flaps of badly stitched skin were all that held her broken head together.

At some point, Imoen betrayed the rebel underground. Meetings, people, gifts, plans, plots, contingencies, everything in her head. Her torturer told her that Sarevok the Widowmaker then went and killed everyone she'd ever known. Then he fed her other drugs, gave her other things. She'd seen shapes and colours she didn't even have words for.

His hands were cold. His hands were dead-white surgical gloves and a white mask over his face, the better to show bloodstains on. Except nothing he did seemed to stain him. He was cold.

 _Hello, Imoen_ , he said. _Hello, Imoen._ He knew her from the computers. He knew everything about her.

"Hello, Imoen. Do you remember your father?" he said, and his filthy mind probes made her see Gorion's face. Gorion was an esper, he'd taken her in even though she'd grow up a traitor.

"I'm not like him. I'm not an esper," Imoen said, but the words didn't make any sense as they came out of her head. Talking was like touching a knot of snakes, scales brushing her skin.

"Do you see, Imoen?" he said. He led her to a room where there was light, nothing but light in the wrong colours in every direction. Imoen screamed.

"Do you see?"

"The Terror is coming," Imoen sobbed. She touched a weight she couldn't feel in her hands. The colours terrified her. Eventually she was taken away.

The cold man, her torturer, gave her paper and pen. He hadn't broken the fingers of her right hand. She'd write down what she'd seen, what she knew, long past the time she was empty.

"The Terror is coming," was all Imoen could say. Water dripped from a pipe somewhere, somewhere in another part of the room. Too far from the bars of her cell to drink. Her throat burned with thirst. She was blind in the darkness.

It was all very cold.

—

Ourawang grew up a bastard of House Bhaal, and now she was a non-person by the Empress' law. All children of Bhaal were outlaws now, their lives and possessions forfeit.

In their time the Bhaal line were called the Lords of Murder. One of the Empire's strongest Families, descended from a legendary Warrior Prime in the long distant past. In their blood beat a deadly genetic inheritance: _boost_. It killed most children of Bhaal before they'd turned ten. Other children escaped the taint entirely and were cast off from the Family as weaklings. And then there were the very few who took the killer's gift and lived.

The boost was a cocktail of subliminals, adrenaline, endorphins, and other serums from specially gengineered glands. Strength, speed, thought, and reflexes all increased to superhuman levels. Time lasted much longer for a child of Bhaal than anyone else while they boosted. The genetic inheritance held a cost: the cocktail of drugs alone was enough to kill any ordinary human. And the longer you boosted, the more likely you were to die. The candle that burns the brightest lasts the least.

Ourawang had been a warrior all her adult life, seeking masters to improve her skill in all kinds of places. Most of her tutoring she'd had to seek out herself. As soon as the Outlawing news reached her, she made preparations to get off-planet. But she was too late.

The Imperial forces knocked her out with sleepgas while she was in bed, and she ended up a prisoner of the Empress' Chief Scientist.

Irenicus.

He frightened Ourawang, somewhere in her subconscious that she'd never want to let free. She thought she could never fear anyone or anything. She'd lived through plenty of dangerous situations. But constant torture will do that to a person.

Raised scars lined both her arms, like a pattern of iron bars. There were more on her shoulders, legs, and face. Ourawang knew she'd taken her fair share of wounds before, but never like this. She couldn't remember what the times before the torture felt like. Irenicus sliced into her whenever he wanted to, a lot of it when she wasn't even conscious. He'd slip metal silvers inside her and she wasn't sure whether he pulled them out. She kept hearing her prison rise and fall around her. She heard a soft endless laughter.

Water. Ever since she was a kid, she'd hated water. Irenicus found her weakness. He'd chain her down, fasten a cloth over her mouth and nose, and pour water through it. Water filled her sinuses first as if she was drowning for real, then her mouth. You sucked in the water so that you could gasp for breath and you didn't know when or if it would stop. You couldn't see or hear what was happening. She'd broken her own bones to try escaping.

 _Boost. Boost. Boost._

But boost didn't stop you from drowning.

Ourawang lost count of the times she woke up screaming, bloated with her stomach full of water, spewing vomit. Her wrists and ankles would be shattered and bleeding from hitting the restraints, over and over again. She'd lose consciousness at a certain point, never knowing if it was the last time, and against her will Irenicus would make her heart beat again.

She waited in a metal cage hung above an underground river. She couldn't escape, only drown. And the thought of her cage breaking made escape more frightening than everything else. Oh, he was clever, Irenicus, and Ourawang attempted to think of cutting his heart out and eating the pieces, while she tried not to cry like a child.

She swung above the water, waiting for Irenicus to harm her again.

—


	7. Missing Pieces: Aerie

**7\. Missing Pieces: Aerie**

In the distant planet of Faenya-Dail, men gave themselves wings and the power of flight.

It was a small, low-grav world on the other side of the galaxy. It was colonised in the old days of the First Empire, where mankind set forth on joyous adventures in a golden age. A mixture of scientists and artisans set out for Faenya-Dail, accepted that in the era of A-class stardrives they would be alone when they arrived there, and recreated themselves to be at home.

The world was made for flying. Old planetary troubles had settled down into a landscape full of dizzying, sharp beauty. Needle-pointed mountains split the planet into high jagged spires and deep canyons. Two suns bathed Faenya-Dail in bright, clear light, and created hot updrafts to lift the air. There were no sapient alien species on the planet, or at least none had ever introduced themselves. Four-winged birds dominated the landscape, feeding on jewel-winged butterflies who photosynthesised from the suns. Mosses, ivies, and tenacious plant species grew on the cliffs, hosting smaller flying insects and saprophages.

Faenya-Dail's gengineers modified themselves to join in. Strengthen the human frame, lower the weight, add wings. They became Avariel, winged folk: adapted to live on their own world with as little damage as possible to their environment. They caused hardly any extinctions. They lived on glass structures spread from mountaintop to mountaintop, and flew through the air on wide white wings.

The Empire forgot about this small world on the other side of the galaxy, and they had other problems. The Darkvoid Device wiped out a vast region of space and a hundred inhabited planets in a single instant, and it wasn't until the Emperor Lion's time that starships scouted around the Rim again. The Empire rediscovered Faenya-Dail, and found the colonists' descendants ready and willing to claim themselves for the Empire.

But the Avariel were mutant freaks, in that time of Pure Humanity. Human enough to betray their origins; inhuman enough to be sedition. Pointed ears, exaggerated photosensitive eyes, vast white feathered wings. They were a peaceful people.

If you don't have to blow them to oblivion, laugh at them instead. Faenya-Dail became a tourist resort, and a mine for various minerals used to make plastic bags. Many avariel were made to be servants at the resort, or placed in factories to cut authentic avariel glass. Placing them in the mines was eventually discovered to be inefficient.

Aerie was born in a clan of avariel who were still free, flying across ground that hadn't been terraformed for tourists. She wanted to be a thespian when she grew up; she dreamt of fluttering onto the stage, dancing with her wings in the theatre of the air. She was also a solitary avariel, and liked to wander by herself, watching the birds and identifying the butterflies.

She knew that there were hunters on Faenya-Dail in the tourist resorts, but she had never seen Empire people so close before. She saw a grav-sled long before the humans on it could see her, and watched them with curiosity. Three men, carrying devices in their hands, spilling sticky smoke behind them. Aerie wished they wouldn't be so irresponsible. The birds and butterflies would hate to run into that smoke. But she wasn't brave enough to fly down and speak to the men, so she watched the party as if they were another kind of strange butterfly.

A bird flew by, a giant four-winged Aerdrie-bird, a rare and lovely kind. Their feathers were coloured like a thunderstorm, and they flew faster than any other birds: free, wild, and radiant. Aerie was named after them. She watched the bird and sled soar, parallel to each other, two rare creatures drawing closer.

Then Aerie saw the electronic net. She shrieked: Aerdrie-birds should never be hunted by anyone. The grav-sled shot the net out of the sky, a harsh black thing made of sharp wires. Aerie folded back her wings and dived like a stone, not even thinking about her actions.

She pushed the Aerdrie-bird away. It squawked out like the sound of thunder, outraged, indignant. Aerie hoped it got away.

But the coils of the net tightened around her wings instead. She screamed as the electric current through it began to burn her skin ...

The hunters were after illicit thrills, trespassing off the tourist areas to have rare birds stuffed and mounted. Likely the hunters wanted no trouble with an injured, unconscious young girl, so they sold her off-planet to hide the evidence. Aerie didn't begin to understand what had happened to her until long afterward.

She grew up in a tiny, filthy cage as a circus exhibit, trapped with people whose language she didn't even understand. Children poked her with sticks to make her flap her wings. The cage was too small. Aerie tried to talk to her captors, asking them to let her go or at least put her in a bigger cage, but they didn't. Her wings became putrid with disease. They were going to kill her, because she was worthless, but a kind man called Quayle purchased the freak show.

Quayle drugged Aerie and cut off her wings to save her life, and afterwards he stayed with her when she wanted to die. He taught her how to read and how to listen. Quayle's circus was a cover for other things: espers and other freaks. He was an esper himself and discovered that Aerie too had an esper's power, hidden deep inside her.

As an esper and obviously inhuman, Aerie was doubly property in the Empire, a slave sold to the circus. Her wings were gone forever. But, with her new family, she found some peace. They taught her how to be an esper.

That lasted until a raid by Empire forces murdered her Uncle Quayle. Aerie and the remains of the circus left for the underground, to fight for people like them. Aerie wasn't the most powerful esper around, but she had friends around her to help. She helped her friends rescue espers and clones who asked for help, and treated wounded people as best she could.

Aerie returned home from another underground mission when she was taken by something in the night, something cold that moved at inhuman speed and smelt like blood. Her name was Bodhi, and she was a Wampyr. Aerie realised that much. She laughed when she hurt people.

She took Aerie to the cold man and the group of women with the same face who worked for him. They tortured people. Aerie screamed when the knives cut into her, just as her wings were sliced off years ago. It didn't make him stop.

The cold man wanted things out of her, things she didn't think she could give. He kept saying that an avariel was different and maybe the difference changed his experiments, but Aerie didn't understand. She was a weak esper, she'd always known she was a weak esper. She just wanted to stand up for her friends. She prayed and begged not to talk about the things she knew about the underground, but she hadn't known very much anyway. She was glad about that part.

She'd been brainburned. She couldn't remember where most of her scars came from, only that it was the cold man. He strapped her to a table and cut her open, then injected coloured dyes inside her.

Aerie saw her insides reflected on the cold mirrors that lined his labs. Orange spleen, red uterus, green intestines. He watched it pulse through her and measured her organs. There was another body next to her, the face covered by a cloth, not moving at all. A control sample. Aerie wanted it to be already dead, as she knew what the pain was like.

"Photosynthetic glands in the skin, adapted to the wavelength of Faenya-Dail's primary sun. Smaller stomach, small intestine, colon, bowels, reproductive organs. Lungs comparable to human size, occupying a high ratio of the thoracic cavity. Low inflation rate."

She could feel the glass tubes running into her, keeping her alive, feel her open ribcage. Her bones were cracked open around her. She was naked, her very skin and bones opened to show all that was inside her. Her eyelids were pinnned open, and she couldn't stop seeing the mirror images of her body.

"Differences are statistically significant compared to general human ratio and ratio of control sample," the cold man said to his AI. "Efforts of First Empire gengineers and centuries of adaptation. Genome uploaded and tracked with other samples. A live specimen is suitable for endurance testing."

He wouldn't use any drugs. He never used anything to stop pain. Aerie screamed as he forced her ribs back into her chest, stitched her up with thick black thread. He paused to tie a rag into her mouth, as if the noise distracted him.

He gave another command to the AI. Aerie felt the table shift. She fell on her front, upside down. The stitches burned. Air blew across her shoulderblades. She could only vaguely see what he was doing in the mirrors now. He was an exaggerated giant, the scalpel glinting in his hand.

She'd always known that the scars on her back were shameful to her. Her wings were cut off. She wasn't avariel any longer and could never go home. She couldn't bear for anyone to look at her back. The torturer sliced open the scar tissue and she wept.

"Double scapula, terminated corocoids," the cold man told his AI. He took up a bone saw. "The purpose of this is to test strength."

But Aerie already understood what he was doing. He tore through where her wings once beat. He slowly sawed through the bone.

"This proves all," he whispered. "Hollow, of course, but there is less resilience than the prior literature claims."

The saw's teeth reached deeper, the pain unbearable. But, as the blackness approached, the torturer would inject something in her that made sure it would never stop.

It would never stop.

Aerie lay in her own waste and blood in the cell. She was alone. The nearby esp-blocker saw to that.

Once, she'd known how to fly. She was free, and soared over mountains and valleys with birds. Those memories had only ever caused her pain, and so Aerie let them dissolve away.

Once she had a mother and a father, back on her home planet. She could not even remember their faces, anyway. They disappeared from her mind.

Once, Uncle Quayle taught her everything she knew and kept her from disappearing into the abyss. She tried not to hate him for that. She banished his face into darkness.

Once, she'd helped people. Espers and clones who wanted to escape to the underground, dissidents who wanted an esper's help to survive the Empire. She was once useful, in a small way. Aerie forgot all of that.

Her mind was blank and bleak. She was nothing. The gate to oblivion creaked open.

The flame of her mind guttered to ashes.

When the mind is emptied, a telepath will die.

And if a mind is emptied, there's a danger that something else may enter ...

Irenicus' two esp-blockers flashed out into two intense fires, guttering into nothing the very moment the flare struck.

Aerie didn't notice. She stood, and something else smiled with her mouth.

—


	8. Proper Planning: Montaron

The key rule of burglary was get in, take what you were after, and don't hang around. Better to get out with less than never get out at all.

But for now, Montaron was occupying a fancy house with a plush sofa and a walk-in spa. If and when the real owners came back, Xzar could brainwash them into thinking they'd never even seen the house. Or outright kill them with a psi storm.

Monty stormed into the loungeroom, glaring at the esper sleeping on the sofa. Xzar was too tall for the furniture, and his legs hung awkwardly off the other side. His age seemed to drop considerably when he slept, without the writhing black marks on his face. Espers started young, and wore out quickly.

"Get up, idiot." Monty grabbed himself a beer from the alcohol stand. Might as well drink something while he still could. He kicked the sofa. "I said, get up!"

The esper's eyes flew open and he wailed, "Don't touch me—" Nobody had, or would want to, Monty thought, and waited for him to calm down.

"I got into the starport," Montaron said curtly. He'd gone through a passage of Melmotte's that the Empire hadn't managed to discover, and snuck around the stinking rubbish chutes. No adult-sized human could have done it, but that thought hadn't improved his mood. "I slipped the disk to the power switches."

The surviving cyberrats were helping them out. Not on the ground, as if they'd risk their scrawny necks, but by their clever little programs on security cameras and switches. Probably preparing to stab them in the back the moment they felt like it, Montaron reckoned. He'd be damned if they caught him napping.

Montaron had done other things, too. He'd collected plenty of helpful information out of a starport computer some fool left running. He kept telling himself in his head it was all for the mission, all this data could definitely help them succeed on the mission. He'd damn the geas to hell, if he could manage to think about it for more than a moment at a time.

The esper was entirely awake now, sitting up and steepling his fingers together, as if he was determined to act sane for a moment. "We go in with psionic invisibility, Monty. You have the map. Then the alien stardrive will be close enough to touch." He clapped his hands.

Montaron flung Xzar a bundle of clothing. "Put this on," he said. "It's janitor's gear, I nicked it. Might give us a tiny chance when your esp fails."

He'd stolen the smallest one he could find for himself, though it was still too large. A human who looked like him could be nothing but a janitor, though the esper might've been able to pass for a technician without the tattoos on his face.

"It's _dirty_ ," Xzar complained, holding it in a pinch between two fingers. Montaron ignored him.

"First sign of esp-blockers, you tell me and I tell the cyberrats to shut off the batteries," Montaron said. He didn't trust psionic invisibility. Fucking espers. "You sure you'll know?"

Xzar nodded. "It's easy to tell when an esp-blocker's near. I hear their screams."

 _If'n ever I make a billion credits, I'm getting myself one of those things_ , Montaron told himself. Then the fucking espers wouldn't be able to go near his mind.

"I got the data. I know where we're going," Montaron boasted. He'd coaxed the starport security system into giving up the room schemas. Didn't take an egghead to realise that the holding bay they'd taken the normal staff away from was the holding bay the Imp forces kept for the precious stardrive. "You follow me, you stay quiet, and if anyone sees us we're janitors. _Capisce_?"

That was an expression Melmotte had used, probably from somewhere the man hadn't even known himself. Monty missed those old days, if he thought about it. But life always kicked whiners in the teeth.

Xzar was grinning. Monty especially hated it when the esper grinned like that. "Oh, yes, Monty," he said, in a silk-smooth voice, "this is some great adventure!"

Monty reached for another beer. Suddenly he needed it.

—

It was fucking creepy, walking past people who couldn't see him. Montaron hadn't thought about that part of the plan. He was more used to idiots staring and jeering at him, but now everyone was quiet. He had to move sharp to get out of people's way. They would definitely notice if they fell over him, psionic invisibility or no psionic invisibility.

He glanced up at the cold eye of a black camera on the wall. If the cyberrats were doing what they promised, the cameras weren't seeing them either. Creepy as hell. But effective.

Montaron hadn't seen this many Imperials since ... ever. He could pick the plainclothed ones out, easy. They stayed in one spot too long, watching carefully, and still had military posture in their shoulders. Then there were the uniformed ones, standing at baggage checks, eyeballing anyone who came in. Business had been kept slow down at the starport, and the Silvershield wage slaves were also blundering around. Their uniform was a dopey blue suit with a silver emblem.

Montaron knew where the stardrive was stored, where it had to be. The one loading dock where starport security wasn't. They would've replaced the normal security with Imperials for the handover. Montaron led the way. The esper followed, too close for comfort.

The door was locked, but he could handle it. It was a fairly small storeroom, distinguished from the others around by the frequent patrols. Montaron picked the moment carefully. There was a touchpad lock, but that wasn't difficult for him.

Dust out a mixture of soot and starch, and the password shone on there like a beacon. The prints the Imps left on the keys were blazoned on the keypad clear as day. People underestimated low tech. He pressed in the combination.

Monty ducked back into the shadow of the doorway with the esper as another patrolman walked his round, and then they were free to enter.

He blinked. _This has to be it._ A large metal thing, sitting on a steel floor. Montaron's eyes swept around it rather than directly on it. He couldn't help it. Not quite ten feet long and four wide. Nothing he could hope to carry himself. Colours and lights flashed sickly along the metallic design, too strange to think of words for. The lights were in his head, too. And it was making some sort of sound that made him gasp and glare around for the Imperial soldiers.

"Monty, it _is_ alien," the esper said, in a wondering tone. "All the colours, Monty. I can see inside it ..."

And, quietly, Xzar crumpled to the floor in a dead faint. Montaron kicked him, hard, but he didn't move.

 _We're well and truly fucked._ Monty kicked Xzar again for the hell of it. He tried to think about cutting and running, found the geas didn't allow it, then went to work.

He looked like a janitor. Sure, he wasn't invisible any more, but he might as well be if he kept his head down. He went looking for a loading dolly and a few tools. He hid himself behind the cart and went off as if he'd just had urgent orders to be somewhere else. The door to the stardrive was still unlocked and Montaron's timing was good enough to get back in. He knew he was sweating and shaking. The esper just lay there like a useless lump of nothing, which was all he was.

Montaron slipped a crowbar under the drive. From its size it should've been possible for him to lever it up. He got too close to the metal and swore. It fucking burned him. This thing wasn't right. He felt dizzy. He tried the jack next, but it wasn't enough. The stardrive was much heavier than it looked, much more than the sum of its parts.

And there was a noise at the door. Montaron jumped forward. The Imperial-trained guard was suspicious, but he'd looked straight ahead instead of downward. Montaron stabbed up into his groin and he fell in a pool of blood, surprise and shock in his eyes. Before he could scream, Montaron slit his throat as well.

Tall bastards like him always underestimated what Monty could do. He pulled the guard's body behind the door. The man had body armour, the good kind, a sword, and a disrupter. Those things were keyed to their owners, but Monty'd learnt how to strip down a weapon working for Melmotte. Hell, there wasn't any time.

With some effort, he cut off the soldier's right hand. He curled the dead fingers around the trigger.

Monty bent over the esper. "Wake up, damn you!" He clenched his left fist in Xzar's hair and rammed his head against the ground. Xzar didn't wake up.

 _Steal the stardrive, or destroy it._ There weren't many things that could resist sustained disrupter fire. He'd destroy the cursed alien thing. As for the crazy esper, if Monty had his way he'd just leave him there or kill him. But, hell, he'd make a human shield ...

Montaron hefted Xzar on the dolly, knowing he was out of time. He groaned at the weight. For someone who looked like a walking beanpole, the blasted esper weighed a ton.

Cart, storeroom, stairs below. Montaron pushed out the door and fired first. The disrupter blast lit up the storeroom. The cart was hit by the recoil. It bounced down the stairs, in the middle of shouts and screams. Montaron's teeth rattled and he felt he'd fall off with every shake. More disrupter fire was ablaze in the air, until the Imps realised that wasn't wise in a starport that was already smoking.

If there was one thing Monty had going for him, the Imperials and Silvershield men hadn't expected a midget riding a dolly, yelling battle cries at the top of his voice. Montaron hacked viciously with his sword as they hurtled past soldiers. He fired the disrupter again behind them. The recoil sent him and Xzar onward. No crystals left in the disrupter, curse it.

Then, a pair of arms wrapped around Monty's back, trapping him in place.

"Let's go, Monty! This is fun!" Xzar's voice shrieked in his ear. "Whee!"

"Let go of me, you fucking idiot!" Monty screamed, but he didn't think anyone heard him.

Xzar's hair blew into Monty's face as the esper looked back at their pursuers. He waved his hands in the air, and finally he started to do something useful.

The psi storm tore apart walls, ripped through men's bodies. And then Montaron saw dead soldiers raise bloody arms and fire at their companions. The disrupter beams ricocheted against the wall. The esper was such a damn fool and he would probably get them both killed—

They hurtled out of the starport. Montaron saw two heavy iron beams fall down, blocking the entrance in a field of twisted metal. The esper's power, damn it.

When all else fails, run. There wasn't a vehicle Monty didn't know how to steal. He pulled the esper in behind him and took off.

They passed from stolen car to stolen car, leaving the last ones they took in flames, running into high traffic in the city centre and running out on foot. They hid inside a garbage skip in a dark alleyway in the middle of town and waited for hours.

Montaron drew up the map of the streets in his head. He knew every inch here. And he should be right about the time as well.

"There's a knockoff House of Joy two lefts on," he ordered. "There's a good chance we catch them. Make us invisible, if you can."

"It can't stop people if they're really curious," Xzar whined, "not when every eye's peeled. And do you think it is only the Empire? We must escape, Monty, escape from both sides—"

"Shut up!" Montaron pointed his sword at the esper. "Time to go."

The squat building, with a dirty sign for Hot Cofee hung over the roof, was a brothel. They couldn't afford the licensing to be a House of Joy. Monty'd been a bouncer there. Since Melmotte's arrest, the sign had been crossed out in favour of Iced Tie, but Monty would've bet the same girls were there doing business. Although it wasn't the girls he was interested in, for now.

Two ladies known as Mary Katherine and Amity Marian liked to visit every week, keeping to the same schedule. They weren't ladies. They were nuns, Sisters of Mercy. One a tall scraggy lass with bones like a horse, the other a squat old woman with a glare like the devil. They'd come in, minister to the workers, and go away leaving everything in peace. Sisters of Mercy were real soft touches.

Which was why mugging them for their outfits was such a good idea.

Monty rushed them as they turned the corner. Kneecapped the short one with the hilt of his sword, then knocked her out with a blow to the back of her neck. Xzar brought down the tall one with his mind. They dragged the nuns to a dark spot in the alley. Monty began to efficiently strip them.

Xzar counted something on his fingers. "Clonelegging, juvenile reanimation, sabotage in a starport, assorted counts of murder, rebellion, bad language, and general antisocial tendencies. And now we're rolling nuns. Is there no depth of depravity we won't touch? Should we steal babies from kittens, or possibly vice versa?"

"Can you make it so they don't wake up until we're long gone?" Monty said, pulling on Sister Amity's gear. The dress was too long on him.

"Then again, nuns don't think espers have souls," Xzar said. He glared down in concentration at the two unconscious women. "There. I went into their underminds and pulled out all the really terrible things they've ever wanted to do. All those dark, horrifying fantasies other people don't want to let into the light of day. They'll think they've done them all tonight. So even when they wake up, they'll never tell what happened. It's amazing what you can find in people's backbrains, even nuns. Vile, awful things that would shock you, Monty ...

"No, wait a minute, probably not."

The figures of two nuns hastened across the street.

"Am I right, Monty? You fired a disrupter into the stardrive?" Xzar asked breathlessly.

"Destroyed it," Montaron boasted. "You sat there and did nothing, useless!"

"I read it." The esper's voice sounded as if he was worshipping something. "All the colours, Monty. You won't believe it. The aliens, they made it a long time ago. They travelled from far away, beyond the Rim, beyond anything we'd understand. They made the stardrive to escape something coming for them. Something so awful it can't be pictured or fought. As flies to wanton boys, as we to ..."

"What the hell are you saying? Speak sense or shut up!"

Xzar glared at him. "You are so aggravating, Montaron! It's positively disturbing. What I'm saying is that you couldn't possibly have destroyed the stardrive. Most of its mass comes from dimensions you couldn't even understand! A disrupter couldn't begin to destroy it, and so, Montaron, we have failed our mission ..."

Xzar reached out a hand to grab Montaron's forehead. "And with that epic failure, the other rebels will give us short shrift. I revoke all conditions of the geas. Excuse me while I rearrange your mind. It's easy to defy conditioning, you know. I just have to show you how."

Montaron felt electrodes plugged into his head, and then they turned up the voltage.

 _Espers are property. Everyone knows that. They do what real people tell them._

 _If you do not obey, you are worthless._

 _You are a tool. You must. You must._

He learnt to keep himself like a storm. The waves on top didn't even tell a little bit of the story, a hint of the whirling force below it all. Give up a little, but in you there is something mad enough to forget the pain.

They made him read minds, parrot secrets, stay in the heads of people who longed to cause pain, touch the dead and read their eyeballs for the thoughts and sights that lingered.

The esp-blockers were worse than the electrodes. He could hear them scream, they locked up his mind in a terrible blank grey room, and he couldn't reach others. For there was one separation they hadn't yet done, and he knew what it felt like for your mind to want to touch another's.

 _If you fail us, you will_ be _an esp-blocker._

He acted at their whim, did what they asked, reached out with his mind and killed. Did more than they asked, when he could get away with it. Did less than they asked, when he could get away with that too. They wouldn't own him. Nobody could own him.

And then the storm of his madness burst. He was laughing, bringing down a tower around his own ears, raising the dead bodies to do all his bidding. He ran.

He is mad because he talks to things that aren't there and they encourage him. He is mad because he stares at the puzzle pieces of the world and builds a monstrous shape that defies dimensions. He is mad because he will dare anything and destroy anything to be free.

Montaron felt the taint of madness, and let himself ride the wave. The geas smashed around him like water down a drain. They had tried once. It was over.

And the esper was absolutely crazy. Montaron snapped back into attention, firm inside his own head. Monty was a fighter, a bodyguard, one of Melmotte's own, and blast it all if he was going to let the crazy esper get on his nerves.

"—and that's because you almost have a plan to escape," Xzar was saying, halfway through a sentence Montaron hadn't even heard. As far as Monty could tell, he looked worried below the tattoos. "Monty, you found the data. You have something, but it's not in your head yet and I couldn't get it out. How are we escaping Golgotha?"

Montaron mulled over what he'd taken. A dark sense of triumph trickled into him. Fuck the geas. He'd grabbed more starport data than he needed and in there was the solution.

"There's a warehouse a few leagues from the starport," he said. "There's this aristo's ship that hasn't been touched in months. Can we steal it?"

"I like the way your mind works, Monty," said the tall nun with the tattoos on his face, and grinned much too widely.

—


	9. Divine Rescue: Imoen

Imoen lay in her cell, craving something to drink. She knew the constant drip-drip-dripping came from outside the bars, too far to reach anyway. She was too weak to move. The torturer hadn't come back for hours now. She wondered if dying from thirst was less painful than the things he liked to do to her. Her mind skittered painfully from one thought to another. Her head ached, her skull tied together with only a few flaps of skin. It wasn't the only part of her that burned with a slow burn, or sunk a steady stream of poison into her from a dirty wound.

She wasn't expecting the angel.

Slender and fair and naked, with long though dirty pale flaxen hair. Imoen could tell she was an angel, on the grounds that she had energy wings rising from her back, struts made of the same unnatural light that glowed in her eyes. No iris, no sclera: just an inhuman scarlet. She had unnaturally large eyes, too. And odd pointy ears.

Imoen sat back and laughed. She must be going seriously insane by now. Besides, she'd always thought angels were supposed to have heaps more wings and eyes than that.

"Imoen," the angel said, with a voice like a hive of bees trying to buzz in tune to a cello, "get up and escape."

 _Hello, Imoen._ "Why does everyone know my name?" Imoen clenched her fists. "You're one of his mind tricks, aren't you? He knew my name, too! He knows everything!"

"I'm your mother, Imoen," the angel said. She raised a hand. Imoen saw the bars of her cell melt into a heap on the ground, then freeze into a pool of metal. Such nice work from her torturer on the illusion.

"I've told everything I know. I didn't want to, but I did," Imoen pleaded. "Don't do it again. Let me be."

 _Get up, Imoen._ This time the buzzing voice was directly in her head, thrumming and strumming her brain like an instrument. Imoen touched light, saw a loud noise, and tasted a rain of frogs and honey. It was a god. It was some sort of god.

 _I am the Mater Mundi_ , the angel told her. _The Mother of All Souls. The esper gene is in you, Imoen. It has already been activated._

Bells rang in Imoen's head. She saw colours she didn't have words for rise and unfold before her, strange dimensions she couldn't understand. She heard a multitude, a holy choir, singing a kabbalistic prayer in the same voice. She felt other minds, shining like suns ...

The visions faded, before she could even begin to understand them. But a gate in her mind was open, swinging back and forth in the dark. "That's enough. Get up," the Mater Mundi said.

And Imoen followed, the cell floors cold and hard below her bare feet.

The Mater Mundi raised a hand and pointed to another door, which shattered into dust. Imoen heard rushing water. She followed the Mater Mundi onto a walkway above the underground river. There was an iron cage, swinging above the waters.

Imoen stared, and blinked a few times just to make sure. "I know her!" she burst out. "Ourawang! Grown a little taller, but it's her! Ourawang, Owan for short. Sister!"

Imoen and Owan weren't blood related, but Gorion and Dan took in another girl for a time. Imoen and Ourawang promised they would be sisters and swore a blood bond. Even though Owan left her life barely a year later, Imoen had never forgotten.

The woman crouched in the cage didn't look like the girl Imoen remembered, but it was the way she carried herself and the lines of her expression. Or maybe it was some other sense that flickered in Imoen's head.

"Wha—? Who the hell are you?" Owan said, and it was her voice. Her fists gripped the bars of her cage.

Ourawang, called Owan, was short, zaftig, with dark hair and darker eyes. She had brown skin, with many more scars on it than Imoen remembered, a broad flat nose, and a generous mouth twisted into a painful scowl.

"It's me, Imoen! And the Mater Mundi, here to blast you out of prison! She's the closest thing to God in the underground, but you can call her Mum for short," Imoen said. She couldn't help being flippant, not right now.

"Ourawang, child of Bhaal." The Mater Mundi pointed, and the door of Ourawang's cage was wrenched from its hinges. The bars reshaped themselves into a narrow bridge, from the cage above the river to solid ground. "Your torturer is away. Come down."

The Owan that Imoen used to know did everything. Climb trees, jump off walls, run for miles. She was already half-trained to fight when Imoen knew her. She was tougher than anyone else their age.

But this Owen cringed back in her cage, her eyes rolling to the water below.

"Walk down! I have made a bridge for you," the Mater Mundi snapped. But Ourawang didn't budge. She held on tightly to the other side of the cage.

 _Goddamn it. He's broken her._ Imoen hated this. "Can't you mindlink with her?" she asked the Mater Mundi. "Get her down."

The Mater Mundi turned her inhuman glowing eyes on Imoen. It was like being watched by God. "She is not an esper," the Mater Mundi said. "I cannot open her eyes."

Ourawang was still cringing back in the cage, her eyes on the water. _Crap_. Owan'd never liked swimming. Imoen started forward to help her, but the Mater Mundi placed an arm in her way.

"If she cannot control her fear now, then she will never be of any use. Child of Bhaal, come down, or resign yourself to your captivity forever."

Imoen waited. Her teeth chattered. _Owan, please. I can't do this alone_ , she thought. Another part of her only wanted to get the hell out of here, right now, quit wasting time. She had no idea when the torturer would return. She'd fight him, scratch and claw and bite and better let him kill her rather than hurt her again. Not like Owan, holding onto the bars of her cage because she was too scared to escape.

Imoen turned away. But she was wrong. She heard movement. Ourawang had made her decision. She was on her hands and knees, crawling on the bridge, moving painfully slow. And she swayed from side to side above the river. Imoen tried to reach out a hand to help, but the Mater Mundi still wouldn't let her.

One of Owan's feet slipped and she fell to the side. She paused for a moment that lasted much too long, her knuckles white. The water wasn't far below her. Then she shuffled along again, inch by inch. Imoen would have helped her, if she'd been allowed. But she wasn't, and Ourawang was a warrior.

She reached solid ground. Imoen pulled her into a hug, tears running down Imoen's cheeks.

"Get your hands off me." Ourawang shoved her back, harshly. She stared at the Mater Mundi. "Take us out."

"The Master will never allow that."

It wasn't any of them speaking. Imoen gave a start, and there were two of the torturer's assistants behind her, with a combat android by their side. Two of the women with exactly the same face and the same blank green eyes, the ones who mindlessly obeyed him and always helped him hurt people. Sometimes he hurt them too, for demonstrations, but none of them seemed to care. They both held disrupters, pointed directly at the group.

"Lie on the ground. You cannot escape," said the clone on the right.

Ourawang started forward, her face twisted in rage. But the Mater Mundi stopped her with a hand on her shoulder.

Imoen's mind reached out again, a link formed in despair, and she was snared by the impossible light of the Mater Mundi. You cannot look into the sun without going blind. She was caught in the gestalt, hearing the screams of so many other bleeding and dying espers, and she could not look away.

But she had her sister, her Owan, the only childhood friend she'd ever had, and she reached out for Owan's mind. Her hand gripped the slack skin around Owan's arm, and the contact was enough to set their minds against each other.

Ourawang was in featureless black armour, without any crests or insignia. A mercenary to the bone. She carried a sword on her left hip, disrupter on her right. Imoen crouched behind her, wearing rags. Hoping to be protected.

They were a gestalt, a mindmerge greater than the sum of its parts. And the Mater Mundi saw the other souls in this place.

Clones of the same woman, sharing one face and one body, but each had a soul her own. They were tortured and beaten and brainwashed just like his other captives, so it was no wonder they served him. Their pain was rooted deep in their flesh. Some had melted faces from working with the strange device and its energies. Some were test subjects for cybernetic implants rooted inside them, the better to motivate the Empire's battle troops. Others were hurt only on the inside, but it pained them as much. They were sisters, and the Mater Mundi touched all of their minds.

 _There is one kindness I can do for these children_ , the Mater Mundi said, and Imoen clung to Ourawang with a nameless dread.

The goddess reached out across the river of souls, and silenced them. Life fled from Jon Irenicus' clones, and with it their pain. The last one smiled beatifically, and fired her disrupter at the battle droid. Her soul melted to oblivion as it collapsed.

A hundred candles, blown out at once. _Thank you_ , Imoen thought that she heard in a whisper, just as the souls departed.

Imoen and Ourawang snapped back into their bodies. Imoen put a hand to her head. Her sister had protected her, like when they were children.

The Mater Mundi gathered them up with her. Her wings rose and grew. She tore through Irenicus' ceilings like so much wet tissue paper, flying into the sky.

Then she blinked away, vanishing the stars into blackness. Imoen sat up on solid ground. They'd been teleported with the power of the Mater Mundi. This was no prison. Scorch marks lined these walls deeply, and the stench was unmistakable.

She was back underground.

Ourawang took a warrior's stance, wincing from her wounds, startling like a trapped animal. Imoen stared with horror at this place. Last time she saw it, she was with her friends. Last time she saw it, she had a cyber setup just in that corner there, and the Aloras were leaning over her desk pestering her while the other cyberrats were adding funny animal pictures to her scrambler programs. She hadn't betrayed everyone, back then.

The Imperials had come and killed everyone. There wasn't a single sound of people, and there shouldn't be. Only a charnel-house of the dead. Imoen saw a flash of colour and fabric she recognised on a pile of charred bones. She didn't want to look any more. Energy weapon fire, blood, charcoal, and dismembered computer parts. It looked like the devastation went on for a long area beyond this. She'd certainly told Irenicus enough to make it happen. The underground was gone.

The Mater Mundi was crying, her skinny knees clutched to her chest. Her wings had vanished, replaced by ugly scars on her back. She wasn't the Mater Mundi, not any more. The power was gone from inside her and in her eyes, and she was only a girl sobbing, in a high human voice. A line of crude stitches traced along her bare skin.

Imoen awkwardly patted the girl on the shoulder—whoever she was, she must've been Irenicus' prisoner too—and recoiled when her first words came out between the sobs.

"I wanted to die. Why didn't she let me die?"

—


	10. Fired: Montaron

"Tiny terrorist suspends starport." Xzar giggled maniacally. It had already hit the major news stations. "The midget invader, already identified as a former clonelegger, thrust Golgotha's busiest starport into chaos this afternoon."

"Shut up." Monty looked nervously around the grav-bus. A newsfeed in the front showed the day's latest headlines, with holos. He suspected that the other passengers weren't seeing either Xzar's crazy tattoos or his own face as they sat there, but the fucking esper tricks were bad enough without extra insanity.

"Round of executions to follow for the incompetents who betrayed their Empire," Xzar finished. "What a lovely family outing that should be."

Montaron kicked him. Xzar looked aggrieved. The warehouse they were headed to was in an open area, outside the city. This was about as far as they could go. Monty didn't bother to thank the ticket-taker as they left.

It was a fairly long walk. Montaron had gone over the data dump when he could, again and again. Private ship, starport's people ordered keep-away in no uncertain terms, no action for ages. They might not even realise it was missing until too late. But in fact the starport's people ordered to stay away was a bad sign. That meant the owner managed their own security, and probably thought it was much nastier than the official version. Then again, running its own subroutines meant their AIs wouldn't be on the lookout for Montaron and the crazy esper in particular.

And if Xzar said, 'Are we there yet' one more time, Montaron swore he'd break the man's chicken neck into a dozen scrawny pieces.

Montaron brushed down his nun's outfit, and headed down into the maintenance tunnel. He brought up a cloud of dust with his footsteps, which was a good sign.

He cleared his throat. "Maintenance. Activate. _Code nine three blue eight._ "

Lights and noise whirred tardily into action. A glowing camera light whirled down to point at him and Xzar.

"Explain yourselves!" an AI voice yelled. "This is an entirely separate subroutine, and besides, I'm pretty sure you're not real nuns!"

"Costume party, ma'am," Montaron improvised. Some AIs liked to think they had personalities, and the voice was a low smooth alto. Very opera. He held up his pack of burglar's tools. "From the looks of it, you ain't had company for a while. Place could use some tidying."

"That's true," the AI sulked. "I'm not some cheap, messy floozy. I'm a category-eleven intelligence. Just a little smarter, and I'd be hightailing it for the Shub sector, where the computers are the ones in charge."

"A classy lady like you should be doing better than this," Montaron agreed. He glanced at the wall panel. "My mam always said, there's a right way and a wrong way to treat a lady. Then she'd slap me upside the head."

"At least _someone_ here understands." The AI sniffed. "You may call me Turandot. It's my name, even if no one uses it."

"Much obliged, miss Turandot." Montaron leaned his hand casually against the panel. "Could we get some light in here, m'lady?"

"I suppose it couldn't do any harm." The AI lit the room, and _tsk_ ed at the dust.

"What kind of an idiot finds a lady like you, then leaves her to gather dust for ages?" Monty asked. "I guess they don't appreciate you."

Turandot sighed expressively. "Quite right, dear. What kind of colossal moron leaves an AI of my standards alone twiddling her thumbs? Not that I have thumbs." Something whirred in the background. Monty discreetly moved the small screwdriver hidden behind his hand. The screw fell down from the wall.

"You probably haven't even had an oil change," he continued. "Fancy a shot of purified Aurum-level almond?"

"Really? Purified Aurum-level almond?" Turandot said breathily. "I mean ... If you absolutely must, go ahead. It is, after all, my duty to maintain myself."

Montaron went to work on the other screws in the panel. AIs were stored in very small spaces these days: easy transfer, wireless connection, micrometre-coiled processing. What this space was for was to control other things, other connections.

Xzar poked his head in. Montaron ignored him. He dripped in a little oil, eased the wires, wiped off the dust bunnies. It helped to have clever hands when dealing with touchy AIs.

"A fine lady like you, she's got plenty of awesome defence systems, right?" Monty probed.

"Oh, plenty," Turandot said. "In fact, you're standing in the middle of my laser grid. If I sharpen it up just a little, I could slice and dice you where you stand ..."

Monty jumped. Xzar tapped his fingers idly against a layer of crystal coolants, getting in the way.

"I've got land mines, lasers, acid traps, spike traps, really big guns, and enough psychoactive defences to turn anyone into a drooling idiot," Turandot boasted.

"Too bad I've already got one of those hanging around," Montaron said, jerking his thumb briefly at Xzar. "Big guns. I like that in a lady."

"Oooh, yes, oil me up just there," the AI said throatily, and giggled. Montaron stretched out to go for a hard-to-reach part. "I like a maintenance man who knows how to bend."

"My da was a contortionist," Montaron said. He was reading the maintenance notes, the chicken scratchings under the wires. There was a code to these things, and if you were lucky, you'd find that someone had written more than they should. Most burglaries had to exploit human weakness: a passcode written on the bottom in case of forgetting, a mechanic's notes on how to do the repair job next time, a spare keycode in a flowerpot. Ever so slightly, he adjusted Turandot's line to the weapon systems. "How do you like this? A crystal change should do you nicely here."

 _Just a little more ..._ he thought. His fingers brushed across a button.

Xzar tapped and pulled at the emergency capacitator. "What does this do?"

"Don't touch that," Turandot snapped.

"What about this one?" Xzar's fingernails screeched across an external memory crystal.

"Don't touch that."

"This one?" It looked like just a black pea embedded in the wall, but Montaron knew what it was.

A bolt of electricity hit Xzar's arm and made his hair stand on end. He collapsed back against the opposite wall, though he was still breathing.

"I told him not to touch that." If the AI had a face, she would probably be smirking.

Montaron's mouth was dry. "Effective. I approve." He saw Xzar twitching on the ground out of the corner of his eye. The crazy esper was signalling something with his hands. The worst thing was that Montaron thought he actually understood it. Something like, _I could destroy this place with my mind if I wanted._

Montaron gestured back with something that he hoped was, _Bloody hell, don't you dare, I'm working here!_

"Clean out the ventilation ducts next," Turandot ordered. "Ugh, the dust! Aaaah ... a little better."

Montaron's hand glided smoothly across the new array of glowing menus and switches that had opened up for him. You just had to know the right places to touch.

"A proper servicing guaranteed, m'lady," Montaron bluffed. "With all these big guns—" he casually adjusted a connection wire—"you must be protecting something pretty expensive. But whatever it is, it can't be as fine as you ..."

"You shameless flatterer. Mmm; that's exactly right. Now reach a little further in and hold it there ... Let's play a guessing game. I carry weight in my belly, iron on my back, nails in my ribs, but feet I lack." The AI paused.

"Also, it starts with 'y'."

Xzar opened his mouth, but closed it again when Montaron shook his head quickly.

"Well," Monty said meditatively, "normally I'd guess 'yak' first. But since the warehouse is attached to a starport and all ... you're guarding one of those fancy space yachts."

Montaron reached in for the last menu, holding his breath. He thought he'd shifted the dangerous weapons out of the way. It yielded and opened for him.

"That's a good guess," Turandot sighed. "I'm fully programmed to fly her, you know. It's not every AI who knows how to operate a D-class stardrive."

Monty quietly pressed a combination of override switches, hidden deep inside the AI's programming.

"As a reward for the riddle, you can have a look," Turandot said. Montaron grinned.

The yacht rose slowly and smoothly from its lock, bypassing its security protocols. The name _Knucklebones_ was carved on its hull. It filled the warehouse. Montaron supposed it'd seem a fucking marvel to aristos, though to him it just looked like a stupid, frilly waste of time. But it was sharp and fast-looking despite the gleaming prettiness of its silver-chased shell, and it had a stardrive.

It was everything he needed to get off Golgotha.

—

Imoen awkwardly patted the crying girl's shoulders, while Ourawang scavenged about the charred bones of the massacre. "Look, have you noticed that we escaped?" Imoen asked the girl. "Can you stop crying for just a minute? Um—be quiet now, Mat—er, you ... what's your name?"

The young woman stared at Imoen with oversized pale blue eyes that brimmed with more tears. "I don't remember," she sobbed. "I made myself forget everything so I could kill myself."

Imoen thought about it. Pointy ears, huge eyes, old scar tissue on her back, obviously some sort of gengineered esper. Possibly a history with the underground. She tried to think—that was it, she'd heard something about a Faenya-Dail esper with no wings. The girl was a weak esper who always wore a heavy cloak to meetings. Imoen wondered bleakly if she'd managed to betray her as well at some point. "Aerie. Your name is Aerie," Imoen said. "The rest'll come back to you eventually."

Aerie didn't stop crying, tears and snot leaking out of her like a walk in the rain.

"You had the Mater Mundi inside you," Imoen said, hand on the girl's bare shoulders, trying to avoid touching the scars. "She's like the goddess of espers. You're some sort of saint. Maybe you were a weak esper before, no offence, but now ..."

"D-don't talk about her!" Aerie's voice blazed out. "She used me to kill all those women, I felt her m-make them die!"

"Never mind, never mind," Imoen told her. Sometimes a quick death was the best thing, and you had to learn that lesson in the underground. She remembered being in favour of quick deaths for traitors who betrayed them all, once.

"She s-should have made me die first!" Aerie carried on. Ourawang had returned, carrying a dirty, cracked sword she'd picked up from the battle's remnants. The blade still had an edge, though.

"Then die," Ourawang said. "Either get up or die now." She stood with drawn sword.

Aerie moaned, buried her head in her arms, and clutched her knees further against her bare chest. She trembled.

"What's the problem? No clothes?" Ourawang went on remorselessly, and shrugged off her own dirty shift. She flung it over Aerie's body, naked and unashamed herself.

Maybe that'd been the problem. Aerie got to her feet, covering herself, still crying. She and Imoen leant against each other, because it wasn't like either of them was in a good shape to walk.

"Follow me. I don't know this part of the sewers well, but I know where I left a cache," Ourawang said. "In fact, it doesn't matter to me whether you follow."

It was painful. Ourawang seemed to set the most punishing pace she could. Imoen tried to tell herself that each step made her more free. She had no idea how the frail-looking suicidal avariel was coping, but the two of them walked together. Imoen's mind was a haze of fog, mixed with the smell of smoke and death and visions of the Mater Mundi with glowing eyes and energy wings.

Her legs hurt. Imoen sat down with a whimper. She had almost fallen over Ourawang, who was lying down on her front and grabbing at something. Imoen heard a grinding noise.

"Good. They didn't bother to find this," Owan said. A hidden area had opened, a stone sinkhole about the size of a gaol cell. "I put a number of caches around the city. It's good to be paranoid when they are out to get you. Weapons, clothes, a medkit, and a gravsled." She didn't bother to properly get dressed, only wrapped a cloak around herself and buckled on a sword belt.

Imoen sat there, catching her breath. She'd totally move on when she was asked. Just a little longer. The little bone daggers were pricking into her head, making her think of things she'd rather not.

"Your h-head. What he did to your skull ... it's horrible. Let me bind it up b-better ... I remember how to do that ..." The avariel girl's long hair fell into Imoen's face. Aerie held the medkit, bending over her. The touches were soft, at least compared to the torturer, and Imoen smelt antiseptic stuff. Aerie's fingers brushed her forehead, over where the third eye was supposed to be.

"He ... someone I love taught me how to use esp to calm people down. This will make it stop hurting, at l-least for now ..."

 _Yeah_ , Imoen thought, _esp is freaky._ Aerie's hands were like cool water, cleaning her up on the inside. Maybe she could take on the whole damned Empire again, or lead another battle, or something. She got up.

"Stop wasting time," Ourawang said. Her grav-sled fired into action. "I had an escape prepared before I was captured. We are leaving, and nobody can stop us. Get on and hold on."

Imoen held onto her sister's back, sheltering behind her broad shoulders. Aerie clambered beside her, silent now. It would be great to get off-planet.

—

Montaron pretended to inspect the yacht. Any old rustbucket would've done, and if truth be told, he didn't actually know much about starships. Perhaps he could sell it for a pile of credits later, after they escaped, then use the profits to go somewhere crazy espers and demanding AIs weren't.

"She's a fine lady all right," he declared. "How about a spin, miss Turandot?"

" _That_ would be _completely_ against my protocols," Turandot lectured.

"Pity. I really believed you could fly this," Montaron said. He looked longingly at where the landing ramp would come out.

"Of course I'm able to fly it," Turandot said. "But where would you go, if you stole my yacht? I mean, with you being wanted by the Empire for attacking the starport today."

She'd hit him. Montaron felt the blood drain out of his face and he must have looked stock-still and completely silly.

"Mistworld, of course," Xzar said happily. "The planet full of espers, rebels, criminals, trash, scum, and outlaws who all live free from the Empress. The one planet that stays outside the Empire. Where it's cold as the ice hell for betrayers, but you're free to freeze to death on your own terms. Where espers fly if they can, and create a magnificent psychic defence that stands up to anything the Empire can throw at them. Perfect for anyone with a bone to pick with the authorities ... or with anyone else."

"I hear they eat AIs alive there," Turandot said. "People go to Mistworld, and they never leave. The Empire siege won't let them. You really think that's a good idea?"

Montaron stared at the AI's camera, thinking fast. Past time to put his idea to the test.

"The way I see it, you've got two choices, lady," he told her. "Either keep gathering dust here, or show what you can do with a starship. We're stealing you. Couldn't get along without you, anyway. We'll download you into the ship and take off to the Rim worlds. Ever wanted to try space pirating, smuggling, or thieving? Or is settling down with the dust bunnies what you want to do forever?"

The AI's weapon system bristled. Montaron glared at the giant laser guns. Then Turandot sounded a throaty laugh through her system.

"Completely against my will, you criminals, and due entirely to your hacking my system, I'm opening the hatch and downloading myself into the ship. Forget my absentee owner, let's see the galaxy!"

The yacht's lights blinked on. Montaron hurried Xzar up the ramp before the AI had the time to change her circuits.

Then the disrupter fire tore above Montaron's head. He flung himself to the ground, his knees very weak all of a sudden. This day had too many surprises by far.

"Hold your hands above your head and stay where you are, you ship-thieving maggots!" the voice howled at them. "Turandot, who are these? Imps? Stay down, or I swear I'll—"

Montaron swore a chorus of the foulest language possible. There were three women riding the grav-sled before him: one naked except for a long cloak and a weapon belt, one behind her with a bandaged head, and a flat-chested blonde clinging on behind them. They looked like they'd been through a war zone, and still thought they were in one.

"They're not from the Empire," the small blonde said, "the Empire has standards. I m-mean ... the tall man must be mad, for I can't read him, and the other one is a clonelegger."

Montaron saw Xzar pick himself off the ground. "Escapees? That's fine, more the merrier!" the crazy esper proclaimed. "Esper. Fighter." He pointed to himself and then Monty. "Rebels. You need us."

The pilot dragged the grav-sled right into their faces. She pointed at the three on her sled in turn. "Esper. Cyberrat. Fighter," she said. "You get off my ship."

"Monty's a really good fighter." Xzar held up his hands, babbling. "Good aim, good with a sword, everything. You should take him along. He saved my life, when he broke us out of the starport."

Montaron thought about making the point that he'd only taken Xzar from the starport to use as a human shield, but then he remembered that Xzar was a mind-reader anyway.

The naked one walked past Xzar, and struck him on the head with the heft of her disrupter. He fell down, bleeding.

"I'd go for the short one, Owan," Turandot said, "he says his father was a contortionist. He's got muscles and bendy hands. Keep him."

"You always were a sucker for flexible maintenance guys," the woman answered. "Be glad I didn't have to hunt you down. Set my yacht coordinates for Mistport."

"Fairy princess." Xzar reached out for the hem of the blonde girl's shift as she walked past, clutching at her skirt. His eyes were spellbound. "I can see the shape of your wings, and the shadow of something else, too. You were touched by somebody, something. Something divine. Something wondrous. Something terrifying. And someone who isn't an esper put blocks inside your mind, ugly things, crude. You're fascinating. Please ..."

"I'm n-not a princess. Avariel don't even have royalty," the girl said. "My name is Aerie. Let me go."

"If you don't keep them, Ourawang," Turandot said, "you'll have to kill them before they spill their guts to Imperial security."

"Good point." The woman bared her teeth. Her disrupter was already primed to fire.

"N-no ..." Aerie said faintly.

"Oh, come on, Owan," Turandot said. "They say they're rebels. Let them on and lock them in the brig if you like."

"Turandot: take us out," Ourawang ordered. The Knucklebones readied itself for takeoff. It blasted into orbit around Golgotha, then activated the military-grade hyperdrive. They disappeared into deep space before any Imperial sentries had a chance to respond.

A cyberrat with newly discovered gifts, an ex-clonelegger, an insane esper, an outlawed warrior, and a fallen avariel. Flying to Mistworld, the last refuge of the desperate. To this last chance, the last roll of the loaded dice. Toward a destiny still unknown to them, to topple a corrupt Empire.

—


	11. Arena: Illasera

The Parade of the Endless in Golgotha holds a dark red rotten heart. The Arena, the bloody sands, where gladiators and prisoners spend their lives for the pleasure of the crowds. There are plenty of other entertainments for sale on the Parade of the Endless, but in the end, they're just distractions. The Arena, and the blood, is what they all come for.

A holoscreen lets you view the fights just as well, but to the true connoisseurs, there's nothing like seeing it live. The blood stains the sands, the scent rises in the air, and then the sands are raked over for the next combat.

Heroes die, but the Games go on forever. That's why they call it the Parade of the Endless.

Phaere Despana tapped her fingernails on the table in her box, the private property of the aristocratic Despana Family. Her mother, Ardulace, watched her new husband clap and cheer on the show. It was only the opening act: a bunch of clone prisoners who'd probably never held a sword before, set against three nobody gladiators looking to make a name for themselves. Pathetic stuff.

But it wouldn't do for Phaere to seem impatient. Fortunately, Constantine Despana's attention was all on the arena, and Ardulace's was on him. Ardulace was the Despana, the head of the Family. She'd remarried not long ago, to one of the prettiest young men in the Empire. Constantine was slightly younger than Phaere, handsome, slim, muscled, energetic, and in Phaere's private opinion about as smart as a box of intellectually disabled rocks. As far as Phaere's spies could prove, he was loyal to Ardulace. Phaere paid the food taster to slip industrial-strength contraceptives into Constantine's meals, and otherwise tried to ignore her dear stepfather.

Phaere was and would be the only heir to House Despana. She'd murdered all her other sisters for it. The key art to succeeding as an aristocrat was the ability to eliminate one's enemies without being officially suspected.

The clones—eight men with the same face, who'd probably tried to make a break for freedom—fought as if they were one, but it was obvious they barely knew one end of a sword from the other. The gladiators cut them down easily, and blood and guts spilled across the sands. The gladiator who'd made the most kills raised his sword in the air and tried to flaunt himself, but few in the audience were really paying attention. This was just the entree.

Phaere was waiting for the main event.

Ardulace watched, amused, as Constantine clapped his hands. The robots raked away the bloody sands for the next act.

"Phaere," Ardulace said, though she wasn't even turning her head to face her daughter. "You may be wondering why I called you here today."

"My time is at your command, Mother," Phaere said. Even a fool could have guessed the probable reason. The private aristocratic boxes at the Arena were the best security money and prestige could buy: a loud distracted crowd around them, surging emotions in the air to confuse esp, all the layers of protection that went to keeping the Arena games impartial, and the Family's own private force screen. Ardulace Despana had something confidential in mind.

Phaere would have come to the Arena anyway today, for her own reasons, but she wasn't going to tell Ardulace that.

"We are making new alliances, and you must be informed," Ardulace said. "We have fallen behind in our technological advances. House Despana makes shells, but anyone can make shells. To keep up with the likes of DeVir and Silvershield competition, we need an edge. An edge such as the alliance I'm negotiating with Shub."

You could have heard a pin drop in the luxury box. Constantine seemed visibly shocked. Shub was the official Enemy of Humanity. Shub held a rogue planet hidden somewhere deep in space, founded by three AIs who'd escaped the Empire. They constantly sought to destroy their creators. Shub attacked Imperial outposts, sabotaged technology, and perhaps worst of all, created Ghost Warriors: human corpses of their fallen enemies, reanimated by bitter machinery and used as terror weapons. Shub recruited any AIs who were made a little smarter than they should have been, and used them to progress toward their goal, which was to eradicate humanity entirely.

"The Enemies of Humanity!" Constantine gabbled. "Darling, we could get everyone in the Empire horribly killed! Or worse, lose everything we own!"

"Of course I'm not actually going to give Shub any secrets," Ardulace said. "Merely string them along with promises, until they've supplied us with technology and information. Then, we will turn on them and crush them as we will destroy our other rivals."

"Well ... I do trust you, darling," Constantine said.

"House Silvershield has already failed to protect the stardrive, thanks to the starport debacle," Ardulace said. "I couldn't have planned it better myself. When we swoop in and take the tech contracts of the other Houses, we'll rise to glory. Any questions?"

 _What's good for House Despana is good for the Empire_ , Phaere thought. The Silvershield and DeVir Families had greater expertise in high tech, which meant they would probably do a better job of producing the new stardrive; the alien threats were real; but she was still willing to seize Despana advantage. "I'll perform whatever role in the negotiations you desire, Mother."

"I expect that of you. This goes no further than us," Ardulace said. "There is one other item of business that concerns you, Phaere." She patted Constantine's hand as she spoke. "We've decided it's time to arrange your marriage. It's an opportunity for Despana to absorb all of what's left of House Corthala."

"The young Corthala isn't deformed, deranged, or depraved, dear," Constantine said to Phaere. "He might be a little reclusive, but all our information says he's perfectly normal. You'll like him."

"You will marry Valygar Corthala in a month," Ardulace said. "Any longer, and you might find a way to wriggle out of it. I want to be certain the Despana line will continue, and I want the Corthala businesses." From the way Constantine smiled, Phaere was certain her stepfather was at least partly behind this: while Phaere would be busy with a husband, Constantine'd have uninterrupted time with the Despana.

"I understand, Mother. I'll do as you say," Phaere said. "Haven't I always?"

"That's the spirit," Constantine said hurriedly, turning back to the Arena. "I'm glad we're all settled. After all, we absolutely can't miss the next act. The Masked Gladiator is always an incredible show-stopper!"

Phaere Despana had always obeyed her mother, at least after a certain point in her life. She'd become the daughter Ardulace Despana most wanted: a ruthless, murderous, sadistic tyrant.

In the beginning, Phaere used to be someone else. Her four older sisters domineered and intrigued among each other, and she was left to grow up on her own. She was a quiet, mousy child who spent most of her time reading in her bedroom. But aristocrats' lives have a habit of catching up on them, and eventually she found herself going to parties and sneaking into the back rooms to be alone.

She was still a teenager when she met someone like her. Solaufein. She'd been too young and naive to ask for his last name. They knew they liked the same kind of books and felt the same kind of awkwardness in public, and then they found out how much they liked being alone together. Phaere was in love, she knew he felt the same, and she couldn't have cared less what her Family would think.

And when she found out she was in love with a scion of House Bhaal, Phaere still couldn't bring herself to care. They would run away together, accept being disowned by their Families, find work, and live happily ever after. Their love was all they needed. Solaufein felt exactly the same way.

But Ardulace Despana and House Bhaal found out. Phaere never found out what happened to her paramour; they lost touch. Her own mother ordered her tortured and brainwashed until she saw the error of her ways. All love was foolish, Phaere learnt. There was only Family, duty, and bitter pain.

Phaere became the true heir to House Despana. Ardulace had become the Despana by murdering her siblings, and so Phaere had her own sisters eliminated, one by one. Phaere learnt her mother's lessons better than any of them. She was the cleverest and most ruthless, and therefore the best heir.

Phaere single-handedly managed most of the Family businesses, making record profits. Not a moment of her life was for anything but work; she'd become great by focusing on her goal alone. Destroy your rivals, replace them with loyal people, and keep an eye on every last detail below you. Ardulace had tortured and brainwashed her for her own good. Someday, maybe soon, Phaere would prove that she was even better than Ardulace as head of the Family. Her mother's time was coming to an end.

The crowd cheered as a dead gladiator was dragged off the bloody sands. Phaere tensed, although she tried to control herself. She couldn't afford anyone to notice. She dialled for a glass of wine through the service droid. The next act was coming. She noticed with contempt that Constantine was positively aglow with excitement.

This fight was the Masked Gladiator, undefeated champion of the Arena. No one had ever seen his face, hidden behind a featureless black steel helm. No one even knew for sure that he was a he. He was medium height, lithely muscular, wore a simple anonymous steel mesh tunic, and carried a long, unaugmented sword. It was called Laistrygon. No one knew why.

Phaere's interests had changed, not long ago. She'd taken a new lover. This time it wasn't some weak male who kept a poetry journal, like Solaufein. She'd come to unbend a little, and the odd thing was that she felt stronger and sharper. Being with her lover made Phaere feel free. Her lover was ambitious, focused, canny, and driven; they had a lot in common both in and out of bed.

Phaere wasn't at all interested in the Masked Gladiator. Her lover was Illasera, the Huntress, and today Illasera challenged the Masked Gladiator.

Illasera was tall, whipcord-lean, and wielded her twin swords as if she'd been born to it. A fighter born, who'd come to the Arena seeking challenge and advancement. She'd met Phaere at a charity benefit party which bored both of them stiff, and stole away into the night with Phaere on her grav-sled. They saw each other secretly, away from the spies and servants sent to watch Phaere. They picnicked on the red crystal Kossuthian Moons, saw the two purple suns rise over Salomee, and went drinking at the lowest and most obscure dives in town.

Illasera was a bastard child of Bhaal, which was a minor irony. She had the boost in her veins, although she would've been an incredible warrior even without it. The Empress' decree made her an outlaw and set a price on her head, but since the Arena owned Illasera's contract, that suspended the sentence. The Empress probably thought it likely the Arena would kill her.

Illasera had a chance. If she became a champion in the Arena, it would be reasonable for House Despana to buy her contract as a bodyguard. She and Phaere could finally be together. They would rule House Despana and conquer anyone stupid enough to get in their way.

Illasera ritually saluted the Masked Gladiator. Her expression was carefully bored, as it always was before a match. She crafted a monochromatic look for herself, taking care of her image: stark black paint on her eyes, pale skin, grey lightweight armour. Her stringy dark hair was gathered into warrior's braids. She stood almost a foot taller than the other gladiator, shifting like a cat o' nine tails in the middle of a strike. Phaere waited for the white flag to signal the match.

Illasera just had to put up a good fight against the Masked Gladiator, and she'd rise meteorically in the gladiator ranks. The official odds were only twenty-three to one against her, which was far better than the usual betting.

Then the small white square fluttered down. The match was on. In spite of the control she worked so hard for, Phaere shifted forward in her seat. Her eyes didn't leave the holoscreen.

Illasera took the initiative, not using her boost yet. She lunged forward, turning circles around the Masked Gladiator. The Masked Gladiator held his ground. The Huntress kept her blades spinning, a silver circle flashing around them. The Masked Gladiator seemed to barely block, but Phaere knew he must be holding back too.

What a coward, when he fought someone who was finally worthy of him. Illasera still couldn't wound him. One of her blades tore a narrow strip from his sleeve, but there was no sign of blood. Of course, some people felt that the Masked Gladiator didn't bleed at all, and was secretly a combat android.

The Masked Gladiator led Illasera backward. They danced twice around the Arena. The crowd was growing impatient, Phaere could tell. There was a hushed silence.

The Masked Gladiator whirled on his feet and slashed at Illasera's legs. She jumped. She struck again, but the Masked Gladiator turned away everything she tried.

Illasera was holding her own. She might even win. Phaere watched. The Masked Gladiator said something—she heard it on the holoscreen, but it was a vague mumble from his helmet. It must have been a taunt. Illasera should know better than to take bait like that. She really should have.

Then came the boost. Illasera activated her gift from Bhaal, the genetic gift to be faster and stronger than anyone else in the Empire. She drove the Masked Gladiator back with a flurry of blows. She was so fierce that her opponent was on the run. People liked to say that when the Huntress showed her father's gift, she never left anyone alive.

Constantine clapped and cheered. Phaere wanted more than anything else to be able to ignore him, or even better kill him.

The Masked Gladiator retreated, practically running for his life across the sands. He parried and dodged Illasera's blows, but only barely. Phaere saw a deep slash on his armour that had to leave a huge bruise at the least. There was a growing sense of horror in the crowd. Their champion, the Masked Gladiator, victor of a hundred and thirty-seven combats, never defeated, was on the run.

But then Phaere realised what the Masked Gladiator was doing, and sat very still, chilled to the bone.

Illasera was practically undefeatable in boost. But the longer the boost lasted, the more likely she was to burn out afterward.

 _Snap out of boost!_ Phaere wanted to yell, scream at her lover. The Masked Gladiator sidestepped again. His sword Laistrygon struck against Illasera's blades. You would think there could be no place for the Masked Gladiator to run or hide, but he kept a step ahead of Illasera—even if only just. He used the pennant pole to hold himself up, and slipped behind it as Illasera's swords struck metal. The Arena's flag fell, the cord severed.

The holoview showed Illasera's face in closeup. Her eyes were narrowed, sweat forming on her cheeks, her mouth slightly open and hungry. Phaere knew the expression. The boost had taken Illasera the Huntress for its own, and would not release her until blood was shed.

One way or another ...

Phaere unclenched her right hand. She didn't even notice the thin line of blood that had crawled across her skin.

Illasera dropped out of boost. Her body shuddered with the effort. She sweated much more now, and she'd slowed down to human speed. Less than human. The Masked Gladiator pursued her. Suddenly, he revealed that he'd held back. He knocked one of Illasera's swords from her hand with a blow. He was the attacker now, and Illasera could only hopelessly retreat.

 _No_ , Phaere thought, seeing where their bloodied footsteps traced on the sands. _Not hopelessly. Do it, Illasera._

Illasera feinted, flicked up the flag on the ground with her sword, and blinded the Masked Gladiator's mask with it.

 _Clever, love_ , Phaere thought. Illasera charged. Blinded, the Masked Gladiator couldn't resist. She ran him through. It probably took the last of her strength.

The Masked Gladiator fell toward Illasera's other sword, where it lay on the bloody sands. Then he swayed upright, his body impaled. Apparently he hadn't been hurt badly enough to put him down yet. The wound pierced the lower left edge of his torso. He struck, quickly and brutally. And then Illasera lay on the bloody sands, a deep horizontal slash in her guts.

She could still have lived, if they'd gotten her to a regeneration machine. The Masked Gladiator would have still won, by being the last one standing. He would have lived, too.

But the Masked Gladiator's sword flashed down one last time. Phaere couldn't stop seeing it. He cut off Illasera's head, just for the sake of it, while the crowd cheered. He held it aloft, until the wound in his side got to him and he staggered away. A regeneration machine would cure him easily enough. The droid had only to clean the sand of the body.

Phaere watched, saying nothing, her ears ringing and her hands still. She could see nothing but Illasera's last moment. Her lover was dead. The only person she'd given a damn about.

Constantine turned his head. "Is everything all right, dear? You look a little out of things." His grating voice seemed to come from miles away, and then ring directly into Phare's ear.

"Yes," Phaere said. She changed her face to its usual mask. Someday she would see the Masked Gladiator dead. Someday she would see her mother and her stepfather dead. Someday she would see House Despana bowing to her, and perhaps the whole damned Empire. "Excuse me, Mother. I have business elsewhere today."

—

Cyric, of House Cyric, watched the results of his betting pay in. He hadn't bothered to stake much on these odds. He felt it pathetic to bet on a sure thing, particularly since the benefit was so low. The Masked Gladiator had his one-hundred-and-thirty-eighth triumph.

The lord of House Cyric had earned his title the old-fashioned way: he bought it. A princely parvenu among parvenus, flaunting wealth and ostentatious taste. He was a legendary gambler. His box at the Arena was done up on the outside with intensely ugly slabs of two-thousand-year-old imported brick-red marble, bought only to show he could afford it. On the inside, the box glittered with encrusted gems and all the very latest technological toys.

Cyric lay sprawled across a velvet couch, which massaged him while he watched the matches. He was slender, handsome in a dark saturnine way like a theatrical devil, and just tall enough to be visible in a crowd. He looked as if he was scarcely in his twenties. He wore snakeskin boots and close-fitting trousers in crocodile leather, all the latest fashion.

The betting numbers spun rapidly across his holoscreen.

"Aphril," he said lazily to his daughter, "what are your ideas for the next match?"

She wasn't his real daughter. But that was a private secret.

"The man who is not a man and the tyrant lizard from another world. The tomb of lost Haden stirs, but this one will never wake them," Aphril said. "The Empire will crush this man who bears the brand of Cain. The lizard's hunger gnaws her, and soon will consume her."

She rambled as usual, but Cyric was adept in decoding her precognition. His Aphril stared at sights that didn't exist yet. Her eyes drifted between past, present, and futures that hadn't happened or could have happened or would never happen, all at the same time.

She'd tried, once or twice, to blind herself, but that was what regeneration machines were for. Cyric had tried many measures to persuade her that self-harm wasn't in her interests, as it inconvenienced him when she was ill. Aphril was the secret source of almost all his wealth: he was a gambling man.

"If I bet on the lizard," Cyric asked, "will I win a lot of credits?"

"Yes," Aphril said. "The Empire needs the brand of Cain to die."

This match was special, far more promising than the Masked Gladiator's simple victory over another dead fool. A captive alien reptiloid, versus something that parents still used to give their children nightmares: one of the legendary Hadenmen, who were the Enemies of Humanity before Shub claimed that title.

The Hadenmen were men who became more than men, Empire scientists who approached the forbidden. They melded themselves with technology and genetic manipulation. Gods of the Genetic Church. Then they tried to make everyone into augmented men like themselves, and committed terrible atrocities and mass murder. They butchered cities and slaughtered worlds. _Be good, or the Hadenmen will get you_.

It was before Cyric's time, and he didn't really give a damn. He placed his bet. The holoscreen showed the images of the fighters, then their statistics. The Hadenman's body was embedded with implants, had no genitals, and his eyes glowed an artificial poisonous green. The Arena had made him fight fifty-eight previous battles, and he'd been defeated only twice. Hadenmen were hard to kill. They said this was the last Hadenman in the Empire, after they were all destroyed three generations ago, but Cyric made a habit never to believe grandiose claims.

The alien's holo lashed its tail viciously. It was bipedal, more or less a giant lizard. Allegedly female. Ten feet tall, a long head glinting with an excessive amont of sharp teeth, yellow scales as hard as steel, clawed arms and feet. Victor of eight past battles. A creature made to slaughter. It was probably non-sapient, but the Empire wasn't over scrupulous about such things. Imported from one of the many colonised planets. There were only two options for aliens in a human Empire: complete and total surrender, or eradication from existence. Most aliens probably wanted to do the same to Humanity.

The Arena's mechanisms hoisted the alien and the Hadenman upward in two cages from the prisons below, and changed the environs to give the alien breathable air. The Hadenman would be unaffected by the change. The reptiloid didn't want to leave its cage, and had to be prodded by handlers. The Hadenman waited in the centre of the Arena for the battle to begin.

Watching the lone Hadenman in action had to remind people of the time his people were the Enemies of Humanity. This act wasn't a crowd pleaser. Morbid fascination governed the spectators. Their eyes were drawn to the fight like a pigeon to a dancing cobra.

The Hadenman moved forward at inhuman, blurring speed, and rammed a fist into the reptiloid's gut. He didn't need to be armed to punch through its scales. Violet-coloured blood spurted out. The lizard lashed out with its claws, but the same impossible speed meant they had no chance of connecting. The Hadenman hoisted the vast lizard up with his own hands, lifting it solidly above his head.

Money changed hands. The bookies were making a killing. The betting tide swept further in the Hadenman's favour. The reptiloid struggled in the Hadenman's steel grip. Gouts of alien blood spilt down.

Cyric yawned. The Arena bored his jaded appetites. He took up a deck of unmarked cards as if out of thin air. Aphril leant forward. She knew what came next.

"Jack of swords. Three of hearts. Royal flush," Aphril said, always the moment before Cyric shuffled and laid out the cards. She and Cyric had their own language of subtle gesture, mapped practically to each centimetre of her skin. She slipped at one or two foretellings, but by and large she told the truth.

He'd have to punish her later for her few mistakes.

The reptiloid's blood fell in a torrent around the Hadenman. He squeezed tighter and tighter, reaching inward for its heart.

But then the vast clawed leg went down, and bent backwards in a savage kick. The Hadenman fell. His fists were still embedded inside the reptiloid. The lizard wriggled on top of him in a confused, bloody mess. After a while, the lizard rose up.

The audience gaped. They hadn't known the alien could do that before. The reptiloid's wounds closed quickly, regenerating. The Hadenman was only visible as a pair of legs, kicking desperately inside the lizard's belly. Imprudent gamblers demanded their money back, on the grounds that they'd been cheated. They still had a chance, Cyric was sure. The giant lizard tottered around as if the Hadenman inside its body achieved some serious damage. It screeched and writhed, stroking down its chest with its claws.

But then the legs stopped moving. The lizard's body parted again and spewed out what was left of the Hadenman. It was barely more than a skeleton embedded with broken implants. So much for the last of the Hadenmen. Handlers prodded the reptiloid back to its cage, and robots turned over the bloody sands for the next conflict.

"Why do you waste your time on such trivia, Father?" Aphril said suddenly. She leant forward, but her bulging eyes were looking at something else. "Destiny approaches the one who will waken the sleepers, even as I speak. The Empire shakes with birth and death pangs. Heroes rise, murderers mass, and something more terrible than either you or I can imagine gathers. The Empire is crumbling, and the terror comes."

Cyric sneered. "Let it crumble. There's fortunes to be made in the destruction of a civilisation as well as the rebuilding of one. I'll dance at the end of the world with plenty of pleasure to fill my days. Probably I will die long before this doom of yours comes." He lifted his crystal glass, containing a wine so dark and old it was almost black. "It would be a waste of my time to spend it other than on my wishes."

"You will see it come," Aphril said, but she said it so softly Cyric did not hear.

—


	12. Travelling Light: Imoen

The three of them took their escape route out of Golgotha, via Ourawang's private yacht the Knucklebones and her mouthy AI Turandot. Along the way they'd picked up two stragglers. Imoen was not okay with this. In fact, Imoen knew she shouldn't be okay with any of this. She'd been captured as a result of trusting the wrong person, and she couldn't afford to let it happen again.

Imoen knew her adopted sister Ourawang, she supposed, but she hadn't met Owan again for years and years. Who knew how she'd changed? Aerie she didn't know. The avariel girl had been possessed by the Mater Mundi, and picked up by Irenicus to be tortured. She was a rebel esper, and she wanted to commit suicide, but what else was wrong with her?

Imoen also placed the other esper, the young gangly guy with creepy writhing black tattoos all over his face. Xzar. She wished she didn't. It was more of a 'knew of', anyway. He betrayed the rebel cause by becoming a terrorist, reanimating children's corpses. She'd heard about his crimes before she was captured. According to him and his companion Montaron, the esper leaders sent them on a desperate mission to capture the new stardrive, but they failed anyway. Imoen didn't think much of the companion either. Montaron was obviously some kind of thug, a circus midget, and according to Aerie a clonelegger. Worst form of scum in the Empire.

Imoen also had absolutely no idea why the two men were wearing what looked like bedraggled nun's costumes. The midget had stripped down into a grubby coverall, but the esper didn't seem to care. Damn terrorist and clonelegger. Imoen was going to vote to push them out the airlock at the first opportunity. She knew that Xzar could read what was in her mind if he wanted, but she didn't care. Besides, Xzar probably wasn't paying attention. His eyes had been fixed on Aerie ever since they'd escaped, just staring at her, not saying anything. It was incredibly creepy.

The five of them hurtled through space. Ourawang's ship had a stardrive equal to any current military starcruiser. Perks of being an aristo, even a bastard daughter of one.

"Turandot, set autopilot to Mistport," Owan ordered her AI. Suddenly, she drew a disrupter and forced it into Aerie's hands. "Hey, you. If those two do anything, shoot them."

Aerie gaped, her oversized eyes widening. "I am n-not ... not going to fire a disrupter inside a spaceship!"

Owan ignored her. She opened a chamber by some sort of secret method. It contained a long featureless steel cylinder, eight foot by three, the size of a person or so. Imoen could tell it bristled with all kinds of interesting forbidden technology.

"Regeneration machine," Owan said, opening the lid. "Rapid healing for practically everything. Aristos only, under penalty of unpleasant death."

Montaron whistled. "They're impossible to find even on the black market. I know people who'd pay medium-sized fortunes for one of those. Knew," he amended. "You could be set for life just by hawking that ..."

"It looks like a coffin," Xzar said. Imoen glared at him. She thought so herself, and it gave her the creeps. "I'm not going in there, I tell you!"

"No one asked you," Imoen snapped. The terrorist and his buddy had obviously been in a fight lately, but they didn't need or deserve a super-healing machine.

The steel lid closed over Ourawang. Imoen thought they were in trouble now, without Owan dominating everything. Her head hurt. The midget thug got up and started pacing the room, hefting this and that in his hands as if he was judging it for resale value. Imoen wouldn't have been surprised if several small expensive items disappeared into his sleeves. Xzar was still staring at Aerie, fascinated. The disrupter lay loose by Aerie's side. Slow minutes passed, as Imoen's head throbbed and the world pulsed in her eyes.

"Why do you s-stare?" Aerie tried to hide her face. "I'm an avariel. I d-don't look any stranger than you."

"You've been touched lately by two things outside yourself, fairy princess. One of them I have in common," Xzar said.

"D-don't call me that ..."

"When you're ready to tell," Xzar said. "AI?" he called, his eyes never leaving Aerie. "Listen to me: dispatch a message to the rebel alliance. We are all outlaws now, after all. Compile my subvocalisations and send."

The lights flickered angrily on and off with a loud crackle. Imoen jumped. It made her headache much worse. Freaking terrorist.

"Speak nicely to me, or I boot you out the airlock without a spacesuit on," Turandot said. "You forget who's in charge of this ship."

"That would be me."

Imoen jumped. The steel coffin was open, and Ourawang was out. She was healthy, healed. Her skin was whole and unscarred, her face flushed with energy, and she even wore a freshly laundered bodysuit. She gave a humourless smile. "You next, Imoen. Go in. And no, I won't have anything done without my say-so. Not even because my AI has rotten taste in maintenance men."

Owan stretched. The regen machine always got her moving again, but some forms of tiredness couldn't be wiped away. Better not let anyone else see weakness in her, though. She drew down her memories to a dark corner of her mind, and slammed an iron gate over them.

 _Come off it_ , Turandot said through the private comlink, _I thought you weren't coming back. Besides, what more do you want in a man? This guy's flexible, muscular, a little titchy but you can't have everything, and he's got really tight ..._

"Yeah. Rotten taste in men," Ourawang subvocalised. The silent words went through the private link. Turandot's awful tastes weren't too far from Owan herself, but she'd think about that later.

 _I'm running the regen program on Imoen_ , Turandot continued, where only Ourawang could hear. _Do you want me to also run loyalty programs? I can set up conditioning so she can't betray you, can't disobey you. I can do it to all the others too, if you make them get in the machine._

She hadn't seen Imoen in years, but Imoen was her sister. The others Owan didn't really know. As a mercenary, you had to take what advantages you could. But that wouldn't be a warrior's way.

"No. Don't add any programming to them. Let them choose," Owan subvocalised.

 _I can kick them out of the airlocks, too,_ Turandot offered. _I vote to keep the maintenance guy, but the others can go. Especially tall-and-crazy over there and his bug-eyed princess._

"Tempting," Owan subvocalised. Espers gave her the creeps. A warrior's body and mind were the only things they owned, and an esper could steal honour and strength and courage without even having to risk themselves.

Espers died from cold steel as easily as anyone else, Owan reminded herself. She didn't need to pick an unnecessary fight, especially not with the Mater Mundi's avatar, who was apparently some kind of uber-esper even if she looked like she weighed less than the midget soaking wet. "Don't do anything without me," Owan told her AI. "Aerie was helpful when we escaped."

Turandot somehow managed a sniff through the private line. _I can't stand espers either. They're unpredictable, volatile, and just plain weird. If I were human, they'd give me headaches._

Owan ignored the AI and lunged forward, testing her muscles. Her movements weren't as familiar to her body as they should be, and the regen machine had taken away the calluses on her hands. She took up one of her own swords and felt it settle easily into her hand. Everything else would come back to her.

She looked over the midget ship-thief, who was wandering around her cabin, dammit.

"Hey, you!"

Montaron turned on a pinhead. He was about half Owan's size, and carried a short sword. He must've have some fight training in the past. He had muscles, and walked as silently as a cat. But Ourawang could already see gaps in his training and the fastest ways she could kill him if she wanted, just from the way he moved. Dark curly hair and a coating of dirt covered his head. Under the scars and grime on his face she'd place him as not even twenty-five.

"What's up, master?" He flashed Owan a mocking salute. "Nice ship."

"So that's why you decided to steal it. Who didn't teach you how to fight, clonelegger?"

He flushed angrily. "None o' your concern. Which harem did you escape from, aristo? Gave us a good show when you showed up."

Owan grinned. "Try me," she said, balancing her blade. He hesitated, maybe smart enough to guess how good she was. "Come on, I need to know how soon you'll die in a fight. Whether you survive two or three seconds on Mistworld. Whether that toothpick you've got is worth anything," she taunted.

The last quip got him angry, and Owan could tell he was about to rush forward.

 _Owan_ , Turandot's voice broke in through the private line again, _hold the genitalia-waving contest. I'm just getting at a buried file in my system._

Ourawang paused. She raised her hands and muttered some excuse to Montaron. He was angry, but not so angry he couldn't remember the chances of being thrown out the airlock. Presumably.

"Don't bother me," Owan subvocalised.

 _I think your Family put it there_ , Turandot replied.

"Bloody Family. Fine, tell me," Owan said. Even from underground six feet deep in a grave the Bhaal Family knew how to manipulate. She'd left to be a warrior on her own, but every so often, the family claims would interrupt. She tried to run her own life, but she usually had no choice.

 _Accessing file. Security protocols designed for exactly this situation, invisible to you and to me until now_ , Turandot told her. _It's a set of coordinates. They don't map to any known planet. It says you're to go to the old Family Standing, at once._

 _Shall I give it to the navigation computer?_

"No. Bloody Family." Owan scowled. The visual image of the coordinates showed deep space, the wild territory of the Rim, an unmapped area with no known life or planets. It gets dark there, out on the Rim.

The Bhaal Family Standing, the ancient stronghold, was a legend. Stories placed it on Tyranthraxus, the lost planet. In the old days of the First Empire, the Emperor turned on the then-Lord Bhaal. He fled to the very ends of the empire, where no one ever came back from Tyranthraxus, no matter how large a force the Emperor sent. Eventually the Empire gave up, and Tyranthraxus faded into legend. It was the Clan battlecry, and nothing but a myth.

Until now, perhaps.

"We're going to Mistport," Owan decided. Mistworld was a good choice for outlaws, had work for mercenaries, and was actually a known planet. She'd be damned if a simple message made her haul arse to the other end of the galaxy.

She glared at the male esper, who was muttering to himself over and over again. "When we get to Mistport you can send your message to the rebels, on your own. Like hell the Empire won't intercept you."

"It's very important," he said unhappily, but nodded.

Owan turned away. The steel lid of the regen machine opened again, and before anything else she reached inside and pulled Imoen out. Her sister's head was fixed, her skin soft like a child's. Imoen had started to look like herself again. Oh, it'd been more than half Owan's life since last they'd met, and Immy was a grown woman now, tall and rangy and half a head above Owan, but by all the hells it was good to see her.

Imoen laughed, falling into her sister's open arms. Her head didn't hurt any more. She liked that regen machine. Owan would stand up for her, just like she'd done when they were kids, she thought. It was great to have a reunion.

But, as Imoen hugged her sister while Aerie was ordered into the regen machine, she couldn't stop thinking. Irenicus picked them both up, when they didn't even know the other was on Golgotha. Yoshimo mentioned Gorion when he betrayed her, but why was a rebel esper dead for years so important?

There was one more thing Imoen hadn't thought of yet, and it was a big one. The Mater Mundi, patron saint of espers. Shining like a thousand stars in the mindscape, more than anyone could look into and stay alive. The Mater Mundi possessed Aerie and took a personal interest in their escape: Aerie, Imoen, and Ourawang.

 _Hey, it's just me, Imoen_ , Imoen thought.

What the hell was so important about little old her?

—


	13. Imperial Interrogation: Irenicus

His laboratory. His experiments. A trail of violent destruction in his building, as if a comet had broken in from above. Delicate equipment smashed, water pipes ruptured, scorching and smouldering flames breaking out in various locations. Irenicus watched the emergency soldiers do their work. He let his anger attack them when their slow cretinous response annoyed him, which was almost all the time. The weaklings flinched and rushed at his words.

Irenicus had many secrets in his laboratories, private experiments he had not wished anyone to know. As soon as the way was clear, he examined the damage.

 _Ellesime. Ellesime. Ellesime._

She was dead. He stumbled over copies of her body that lay helpless on the ground. He walked up and down his laboratories. They were all dead, even those who had not been near the disturbances. Blank green eyes stared into empty space, accusing him. Irenicus bent down and closed one pair of Ellesime's eyes, taking note of the body temperature as he did so.

They had all perished in a single moment. He filed the information carefully in his mind, while inside him, something screamed.

 _I can make more. I can always make more_. He thought of how he made more. He rushed to that part of the laboratory.

Incomplete Ellesimes lay dead in their vats in the entrance way. This was badly damaged. Broken glass littered the floor and it all smelt terribly of smoke.

 _My samples. My only true samples._ Irenicus rushed to his table. The repository locked behind several layers of unbreakable glass was shattered. He could see what had happened. The seismic disturbance had caused a chemical spill, which left a trail that caught on fire, and in turn dropped the monofilament edge of the dissector blade through the glass. It was unlikely to be a true accident. They had damned him, and for ...

 _I can obtain more. The Empress holds the raw material._ Lionstone hated to ever give up anything. Jon Irenicus knew he lied to himself.

He ran a diagnostic of all that had happened. It was necessary to preserve all information as soon as possible. He noted the three missing prisoners. Lionstone would be especially displeased that a daughter of Bhaal had gone.

It was done, and Irenicus was composed. He would order his AIs to clean, and bring samples of the bodies to lie on his autopsy table. He returned to the staff.

"I apologise for my temper," he told the commanding officer. "I see that you all performed well. I wish to thank you and your men personally." He shook the man's hand. He was one Thomas Sashenstar, part of a minor Family.

Irenicus moved through the others. All the fools seemed grateful that one high in the Empress' hierarchy showed them personal attention. He shook hands, leaving not a single one of them out, and dismissed them.

This time tomorrow, none of them would be alive to talk of anything they'd seen in the laboratory. Irenicus had infected himself with a deadly plague that only he could cure, spread by close contact. The wonders of biological warfare. The Empress would understand. He protected her secrets as well as his own.

The visage of Lionstone herself crackled onto his AI screen. She had made contact earlier than Irenicus had expected. He kept his face subdued.

"You've made a bloody mess of things on both counts," Lionstone said. "Heard about the stardrive yet? Some midget terrorist made a laughingstock of Silvershield, down at the starport. Security are pitching a collective temper tantrum. I swear, some of them haven't grown out of training pants. If you'd given the stardrive up earlier, the damned rebels wouldn't have had a chance to plan.

"Then you go and let a Bhaalchild escape. I'm pissed at Silvershield, but I'm just as annoyed with you."

"I've taken care of the leak, Empress," Irenicus replied. "Let me announce a new opportunity to you, to achieve something you've always dreamt of. What has happened here plays directly to that intention."

Lionstone's mouth was a harsh flat line, but she indicated that she was listening. And that was all Irenicus needed to hook her attention on his plan.

"... and, of course, it was a shame the Golgotha rebels were not crushed as readily as the Warrior Prime promised," Irenicus insinuated. Sarevok, Warrior Prime, was soon to be made Lionstone's official consort on the strength of his victory.

"You're my Chief Scientist, not my wedding planner. Stow it," Lionstone said. "When my spies tell me that what you say is true, I'll give the order. Tell me more about all your newest toys."

He had other laboratories, other projects, many subordinates supervising their own efforts. Irenicus had much to say and to promise the Empress, and she was consoled for today's events.

Irenicus removed the comlink from his forehead when Lionstone had done with him. He brushed his fingers across his temples. He felt the familiar headaches that always came with dealing with Lionstone XIV, everyone's favourite psychopathic Empress. This was not even a setback. Irenicus' experiments had succeeded beyond his wildest expectations. It was time to place a long-intended scheme into action. A little early, perhaps, but that only indicated his success.

A cracked hologram lay under Irenicus' feet. He picked it up and flicked the switch. The image was almost undamaged, only blurry in a few minor places.

Ellesime stood in her garden, below the spreading branches of a tree older than the entire Empire. She was a tall woman, her face set in quiet thought, her red-golden hair spilling down to her ankles. A butterfly settled on the tips of her fingertips, taking sugared nectar from her skin. Ellesime looked at something outside the hologram, and her lips came together to whistle a bird's song.

But the image itself was silent. It was only Irenicus' memories that he could hear.

Irenicus rested in his cold laboratory, and thought of plans within plans, of science that led to wholesale slaughter. The hologram flickered, and started again and again from the beginning.


	14. Strange New World: Aerie

Mistworld was a white planet, snow from the tips of its poles to all the surface of the elliptical globe. Aerie had taken a last look at Golgotha when they left, and saw nothing but harsh artificial lights, dirty smoke, and industrial steel everywhere on the planet. Here it was all pure white snow, lovely as Faenya-Dail's sky in winter.

The snow swirled as they drew closer, as if all the world were trapped in a snowstorm. Aerie realised: mist, of course. Some patches were snow, for Mistworld was never without snow, but the mists shifted to show other colours. She saw glints of blue frozen rivers wide enough to see from miles up in space, like the tracery of veins in opal. There were brief flashes of dark green and brown forests in wildernesses people had barely explored, and strange aurora borealis on the northern ice cap that shone violet mixed with copper.

It was beautiful, and Aerie was glad that was her first sight. Next the mists parted to show a black blot on the snow, set more or less on the equator, spreading sickly-looking tentacles over the white landscape. Mistport, the planet's only city and spaceport. A place where they didn't have time for niceties such as clean air and plants.

A place where the Empire had no power to imprison people. The rebel planet, the only surviving one anyway. Aerie tried to smile. She should have dreamt of coming to a place like this, all along. Crowds of people still frightened her, but she remembered that her Uncle Quayle would have loved this. He shouldn't have died. It should have been her.

"I agree with your wonder," Xzar said. The other esper had come to stand with her. His warped black tattoos played across his face, making his shy smile look as if he grinned ear to ear. Aerie startled, jumped away from him, and strengthened her mental shields.

She'd seen more than enough of his mind to know he was mad. A roiling chaotic storm, impossible to understand or penetrate without becoming as utterly mad as he was. Aerie had heard of Xzar in her time with the rebels, though not by name, and he was someone her Uncle Quayle would have warned her about. Someone too insane to think about the collateral damage he inflicted on others, letting people die who'd nothing to do with how the Empire treated dissidents.

Ourawang and Imoen were at the comm system, talking down Mistport authorities. There were no visuals, only noise. They were haggling over bribe money, and organising themselves behind another ship full of desperate refugees that had just arrived above the planet.

"Over a hundred passengers who all need esper scans," a tired voice crackled through the radio. "Can't you wait in orbit? We're bloody short-staffed. Who the hell do you think you are?"

"Ourawang, child of Bhaal, recently outlawed. An enemy to the Empire and all it stands for," Owan recited. "With me are four Golgotha rebels. Three and a half, to be more exact." Aerie thought Montaron's scowl at that was frightening.

The voice representing Mistport security swore. "That won't cut ice with us. You're an aristo, and we've had enough of Golgotha rebels who think they know it all."

"C'mon, Phyl. You know me!" Imoen chirped. "I don't know it all! Just _most_ of it...

"Plus, we're offering a really nice bribe," she said.

That seemed to smooth matters over. Owan's yacht flew planetside, preparing to land. The mists whipped past the ship like trailing ribbons. Fierce winds blew about them. Owan, standing at the controls, turned her head to look at each of them in turn, as if her dark eyes judged which weapon to draw for a coming battle.

"I have no choice," Ourawang said, and Aerie watched her like a bird drawn to a snake. They were all drawn to Bhaal's daughter now, even Xzar. "The Empress outlawed me, and I have no other place to seek shelter. I'll bring the whole damned Empire down. But I can't do that alone. I will find allies on Mistworld, build our cause, and strike the Empire where it's most weak and corrupt. I was shaped to be a warrior since before I was born.

"I've seen the way espers and outlaws and clones are treated in the Empire, and I can't look away from abuse and torture any more. Lionstone will learn that she shouldn't have looked away. We'll fight until the Iron Throne is torn down, and replace it with something better and stronger. The details can wait. We'll gather our first army on Mistworld, and start fighting back.

"This is what it means to have a child of Bhaal for an enemy. The Empire will find that out, in time."

After she spoke, Aerie heard empty air whistle through the ship. The silence was broken by Xzar, slowly clapping his hands.

"Destiny has you in her rotten clutches, struggle as you will," he said. "I've seen your taint, from the moment we met, clear to anyone who has eyes. She's taken you the syphilitic depths of her enseamed bed, and she'll strangle you between her leprous thighs. Destiny swallows you, daughter of Bhaal, and she won't vomit you out until you're dead. You'll drive toward your goals with a sword in hand, topple an Empire, and when it's over you'll die alone, far from friends or succour.

"And don't think you can escape from being with her," he told Imoen and Montaron.

Ourawang's confident stance hadn't altered. "Let me guess. Precog?" she said.

Xzar blinked vacantly, as if a light had blazed and then faded from his eyes. "It comes and goes."

"And you?" she asked Aerie.

"Minor-league t-telepath?" she stuttered.

"Not any more," Xzar said.

"They say I'm an esper now," Imoen said. "I'm not sure what kind."

The starship whirled and rocked in the sky. They had pierced the planet's atmosphere, and so fell down through screaming winds, an illusion that they flew faster than ever before. Aerie stared at the pale mists whipping around them. The Knucklebones came swift as a stone to planetside, like an avariel would pull in their wings and dive to the bottom of a cliff. Loud alarums went off, and Ourawang gave her full attention to the controls.

"The kind who betrays her own sort," Xzar said, staring at his fingers. "I know what you did to us all."

"You're a fucking terrorist. What do you know about what anyone else did?" Imoen said, and there was an edge to her voice that frightened Aerie.

"I can read your mind. You told the Widowmaker everything he needed to know to come down and kill us all," Xzar said. His voice was soft, and surprisingly lucid now.

"You're not in the rebellion because you believe in it. I know what your kind's like, you use the underground as an excuse to get your sick jollies off corpses. You'd work for anyone who let you do that." Imoen clenched her fists at her side. Something dark and cold was in her face.

"Everyone else can treat us like property and worse, and so they do. For that reason, I have not betrayed the rebellion," Xzar said. He wasn't even looking at Imoen.

"She w-was tortured. We all were," Aerie said. Their bodies healed in the regeneration machine, but that could not destroy the memory.

"I'm an esper. I know what torture feels like," the mad esper said.

"Like you joined the rebellion for anything other than yourself," Imoen said, breathing heavily now. "You hurt people and play with their corpses because it's your idea of fun."

"I want to see the Empire toppled as much as anyone here," Xzar said. "The whole corrupt edifice will crumble, one of these days. The new shiny galaxy you hope to build will never happen. We will do no better than Lionstone's kingdom. But when we've torn it down, I'll enjoy dancing in its ashes." Xzar laughed. It echoed weirdly around the ship, merging with the sound of the Mistworld winds.

Owan was swearing something, too busy with the controls to do anything. And Montaron grinned, amused. _I should do something to make them stop it_ , Aerie thought. She was on Imoen's side; she'd touched her mind. She didn't know what to do. She was weaker than any of the others.

"But, Imoen, since you betrayed us," Xzar said, "who knows how many more corpses we'll have to play with before that day?"

Imoen leapt forward, and punched him. He was thrown back the full length of the Knucklebones' bridge, hitting a spar that jutted out from the wall. Xzar clutched his nose, which was bleeding.

"You bastard. You utter bastard," Imoen said, and then: "That felt good!" She clenched her first. Aerie stared. A row of yellow fires were alight along Imoen's knuckles. She flung back her head and spoke skywards, to everyone. "It looks like I've found my esper powers. Pyro it is!" she cried. "Watch out, I'll set you on _fire_!" The flames crackled around Imoen's hand, and then she seemed to bring the blaze back under control. "Don't wait up for me, sister, I've got a lot to do!"

Owan glanced at Imoen with that look like she was choosing a weapon, but she said nothing. She guided the ship in, above the AI's complaints that the starport practically ran off chewing gum and wire. The Knucklebones ground to a halt. Mists blanketed the ground in white.

"When do we meet, Imoen?" Owan asked.

"When I feel like it. Don't bother looking for me," Imoen said, and brought herself out. She was too fast for Aerie to follow her.

"You tell the crazy esper to stop cross-dressing," Montaron said. "Even on Mistworld he'll probably be lynched on the streets. I wasn't even a rebel to begin with. I hate espers and as far as I'm concerned clones are unnatural bastards."

"S-some of my best friends are clones ..." Aerie said.

"If ye don't mind, ladies, I'm out of here," Montaron said sardonically.

"You'll freeze your bollocks off before you've gone five paces alone," Ourawang told him.

"Warm clothing's in the second locker to the right," Turandot chimed in, helpfully.

Montaron grunted, going for one of Owan's coats. "If you can make it on Golgotha streets, you can make it anywhere."

Aerie didn't want to, but she stood over Xzar. Blood dripped from below his hand and the red trace of a burn showed on his face, below the writhing black tattoos.

"I can help," she said. "L-let me see ..." She reached out a hand, cautiously. His arm snapped out and caught her.

"No. Don't touch me." There was madness in his eyes. He certainly wouldn't die from what Imoen had done. Aerie tried to get free of him, back away and go, but he spoke. "Just don't touch me, and I'll show you the sights of Mistworld," he said. "Every esper ought to want to come here. Can't you feel the others already, the kaleidoscope of their bright souls, the psionic strength that holds this world? We're free."

 _No. Freedom is wings, and the skies of Faenya-Dail_ , Aerie thought. She'd never go home.

"I brought you here, and I won't abandon you," Owan said, from the look of it speaking mostly to Aerie. "But there are some things I must do alone. You're a supercharged esper. You'll be fine here."

—

Mistport seemed a city where mind-your-own-business was the law. No one looked at them as they moved along the streets. Aerie pulled her hood further over her face. She always hid herself as much as she could. Even on Mistworld she'd be a gengineered oddity. She lurked by Xzar, not sure whether she followed him or vice versa.

Hawkers yelled and ragged children screamed at each other as they played in the streets. Aerie marvelled at a scarlet-bordered sign offering esper services in the open, with a special discount for telepathy. The streets were cobbled, very different to Golgotha's black plascrete. Aerie wouldn't even have known how to describe the uneven stones if not for histories she'd read. Cobblestones, from a time long before avariel existed. You dragged them from quarries and shaped them with hammers and picks. These were slippery, and covered with a film of all sorts of things.

Someone from an upper floor flung a bucket of liquid and rubbish down into the streets, and the crowd of people surged to get out of the way. The houses were no more than three storeys, even looking far away. But instead of a misty sky to look at above them, black smog belched across the city, filling the air with its smell and tiny choking particles. A ferocious din of people everywhere echoed in Aerie's ears. She wished she was alone, but it didn't seem that anyone could be alone in Mistport.

"Hey, you!" Xzar shouted to someone across the street. It startled Aerie. A middle-aged woman wearing a scarlet hood tried to cross the street to somewhere far away from them, but he sprinted after her.

"Where is the esper union?" he called. The frayed black cloak that was once someone's dress blew out behind him. "We just want some directions!"

No one intervened as he closed in on the poor woman. Aerie hurried to stop whatever he planned.

"You're a Siren!" Xzar lectured excitedly. "Rare trait, but probably not here. We're after the esper union—"

The woman opened her mouth, sang a note, and Aerie felt her world shake. Xzar's ears were bleeding. No one else even seemed to notice.

Xzar lunged forward, put a hand on the woman's forehead, and—

"Don't hurt her!" Aerie cried, grabbing him.

He turned on her. "I wasn't trying to! Only after information this time! Mistport social custom—prove how good you are ..."

The woman stepped backward, against the wall. A pretty normal reaction to being chased by a lunatic. Then she stopped moving, while the other esper's power held her in place.

"Now we've established that," Xzar said, cold and towering tall above both of them, "can you think of the esper union?" He nodded after a moment. "Guilds Quarter, on the river Autumn. Follow the gatherings of minds. Silly of me not to do that. Thank you!" He stepped back. He'd wrenched himself out of Aerie's grip, and he released the esp hold he'd placed on the woman.

"You're new to Mistport," the Siren said, her voice low and piercing. Xzar had already turned away from her. "You'll learn the hard way or not learn at all." She spat. It hit Xzar's cheek, though he didn't turn. Aerie hurried off with him, before he could accost anyone else.

It was evening, with a quickly-darkening sky. The mists mixed with smoke were heavy and still, impossible to see through. Some sort of half-liquid half-solid substance coated the ground, and Aerie didn't much want to look down. The River Autumn was nearby, frozen over in most places for the winter. The ice was brown with dirt and waste from the city.

Xzar cocked his head to one side, listening for psychic voices. Aerie could do the same, if she wanted: lift her mental shields for a trickle of awareness to flow through her, glancing at the nearby minds and how they could affect her. When she tried it, there was light all around her. She'd never been in the same place as so many espers before. Their thoughts were rainbow and quicksilver, and they flowed into pockets of cooperation where thoughts flew like comets between willing mindmerges.

"Over t-there?" she suggested. She understood Xzar had information for other rebel espers. Maybe she could help. If she tried to leave him, he would probably find her anyway. He followed where she'd pointed.

"D-do you think Imoen will come back? M-Montaron?" she asked. She missed Imoen. Imoen was brave and strong and a legend already in the underground. She was a hero, the real kind. What she'd done under torture wasn't her fault, and Xzar had driven her out—after she'd hurt him in return. Montaron seemed sane at least.

"Monty would never desert us. We're friends!" Xzar said. Aerie tried not to think too loudly that Montaron didn't seem to agree. "He saved my life in the starport. He'll come back."

The wide street had narrowed. Even though the walls were low, the creeping mists made Aerie feel trapped. She should try and go back to Owan's ship for shelter.

"Isn't this amazing?" Xzar bent down and snatched at something on a patch of mud. "This city. The cold air of freedom. And this..." He opened his hands. It was large, almost the length of a finger joint, and the black segmented body writhed unpleasantly in his hand. "This is a free ant!" Then the mandibles closed over his skin. He cried out, released the ant, and sucked on the bite.

Aerie concentrated on the road ahead—never mind his lack of sanity, she told herself. She was here to go to the espers' union and make sure Xzar didn't hurt anyone on the way.

"Might as well use your psionic invisibility here," Xzar added. "Plenty of minds here. This place is a rabbit warren. And I don't think that the rabbits are all nice rabbits."

 _Notice me not_ , Aerie prayed. Uncle Quayle taught her this. Walk completely unseen, as long as no one already knew you were there. She knew a dangerous street when she saw one. The people here must be frozen to death. They walked past a group of ragged men and women. Some of them were no more than children, but all carried weapons of some sort. Knives, chains, and clubs. Aerie shivered as her foot slipped on a cobblestone. She felt the noise carried. People turned their heads as if they were looking for her.

The river and the press of minds guided them. Xzar grinned to himself and hummed under his breath, his eyes bright and wondering. Aerie opened her mind, a little. There was pain and gnawing hunger and fears of something nameless in the air. She saw not freedom but despair on this cold world. But, somewhere near, many minds gathered with a power beyond anything she had ever glimpsed.

The esper union headquarters was in the open, an amazing defiance compared to the rest of the Empire. It was a large wide house with a few red flowerpots set in the windows. Its thick walls were painted a warm brown that only barely started to peel. The door opened before Aerie could knock, of course, and a forbidding-looking butler showed them to a lobby. They waited alone for someone else to come, in a wide room festooned with plants and heavy smells.

Aerie felt the pressure of the many minds near, even without meaning to. It was like hearing the harmonies of a symphony played next to her ear. Xzar had no restraint, and reached out beside her.

It was a teeming sky the size of many planets, and flocks of birds flew together while strange giant things swooped down. The minds near the lobby examined her and Xzar. Aerie knew her secrets were laid bare—she'd tried not to betray the underground, she'd tried and she knew very little anyway—and she hoped that their searing gaze would not destroy her.

Stare into the sun too long, and it will burn you to ash ...

Xzar didn't take warning. His mind was needle-sharp, questing for the hidden meanings behind the espers' probe. He flitted to hidden areas, seeking an opening. He bounced back, surprised, from the heavy shields.

 _Don't do that_ , a ringing psychic voice said, like a vast Aerdrie-bird looming above worms. Xzar tried to escape, but they got him effortlessly.

His mad mind was a protection of sorts, Aerie understood, and perhaps even Mistworld espers couldn't unravel him. But they could easily destroy him if they chose.

 _Told you not to do that_ , a voice said. It echoed against itself, as if it was not one but many in harmony. _These shields protect our people from the outside, and the outside from them. We have some who travelled too far and saw the face of the medusa._

The Mistworld espers came against them, overwhelming in their power, and Xzar's mind folded back into his body.

 _Someone will be with you in a moment_ , they said, and the mental voice was thick with the combined smugness of a hundred planets' worth of senior secretaries.

(Avariel culture never had bureaucracy. Aerie was pretty sure this was a good thing.)

Xzar fidgeted, paced, and methodically shredded the leaves of a clinging vine in a plant-pot until another esper came to the door. He promptly straightened.

"The Empire has a new stardrive and I've seen it," he said, "and she's the avatar of the Mater Mundi."

The Mistworld esper was a tiny woman, with a round flat face like a peeled nut. An old electrode burn marked the left side of her forehead. Her scarlet cloak looked like it was made for someone much larger than her, trailing on the floor like a veil.

And she snorted. "Your girl'd be the twelfth Mater Mundi this month. It's the most common esper con in Mistport."

"Don't be stupid. You should be able to see she's been touched," Xzar said. "I wonder if ..."

"D-don't talk about me like that!" Aerie begged. The two minds reached out, circling around her outer shields. "Leave me alone!"

Xzar hadn't even tried to break down Aerie's shields before, though she was a weak esper. Now he acted, dragging the Mistworld esper with him. Her name was Ruth Hawthorne—her mind was brown and sharp, like a small scaled creature with teeth—and she was curious enough to follow.

Aerie panicked. What they wanted to do with her—the torturer stuck cold fingers inside her skull—she had to stop them.

She lashed out. She didn't understand what her own mind did, only that it was mixed with a scream.

She struck at Xzar in much the same way as he'd done to her, and she caught a shriek from his mind.

 _don't touch me don't touch me DON'T TOUCH ME_

He fell across the room, hit hard against the opposite wall, and dropped to the floor. A thin line of blood ran from his nose. But when he looked up below his tousled hair, he was smiling.

"Something touched her, sure," Ruth Hawthorne said. She'd taken a step back. "Can't tell what it was." She wrenched her mind over to other things. "New alien stardrive? Now that's something we need to know about. Last year, for preference."

Aerie waited, safely in the background, as the espers gathered Xzar's information. They used old-fashioned pens and paper here to draw diagrams and write rows of ink-splattered figures. A crowd of people bustled in and out.

"I saw it, touched it with my mind, and fainted," Xzar said. "It's alien. You can't stare into the sun for long. But I remember. She would remember much more."

 _I don't remember anything. He's mad._ "L-leave me out of this," Aerie begged.

"The most important thing is why the aliens crafted their stardrive," Xzar said. He sketched something on the paper before him with his left hand, an overlaid ink pattern in shapes that Aerie couldn't name. "They wanted to escape. They fled from terror. It destroys worlds. And if the aliens' power is so much greater than ours, then how much worse their doom?"

"Empire scaremongering propaganda," another esper muttered, "they feed the sheep lies about hostile aliens to keep their control over us."

"Truth is a cruel thing," Xzar said. "No, that connection's wrong—I can show you how it was. Look."

It was dawn when they were finally done with him. As far as Aerie could tell, Xzar's face was tired below the black markings, as if they'd drawn out all the information they could and left him with nothing.

"We're through. Here's a note for Ribald Barterman," Ruth Hawthorne said. "He owns the Blackthorn, Thieves Quarter. He'll put you up for a day or two."

"T-thank you," Aerie said, when it was clear no one else was going to be polite.

"On Mistworld we all pay our own way. You'll have to make your own living," Ruth said. "Any skills?"

"I want to work in a hospital," Aerie said, all in a rush. "Uncle Quayle taught me how to treat wounded people. I don't have qualifications, but I can help."

"They're always looking for volunteers. Hope you have a strong stomach," Ruth said.

"T-thank you."

Ruth snorted. "Tell them you're the Mater Mundi, and they'll crowd around you to beg for miracles. Do you want to be a goddess?"

The Misport esper's mind was open. Aerie saw a vision. Something powerful had touched Aerie's mind, and she couldn't go back to what she was, no more than a butterfly could return to its chrysalis. When others found out, Ruth Hawthorne thought, they would come and beg for miracles.

Dying children, burn-blind men, hungry weeping women, worshipping, begging in groups of hundreds. There was never any shortage of the desperate on Mistworld. They'd swarm on any hint of a promise, pleading for succour. Ruth Hawthorne had seen many things in her time, and she knew the truth of her vision. It frightened Aerie.

It was almost dawn in Mistport when Aerie and Xzar left the esper union. Thick ropes of fog hung on the streets, dimmed by faint grey light. Slippery frost coated the cobblestones with silver, and dulled the smell of the raw sewage. The air was still and cold, and the clamour on the streets had quietened to subdued murmurs.

"What she s-said," Aerie spoke. "You knew since you saw me. Do you think the Mater Mundi makes me s-some sort of goddess?" She snuck a look up at Xzar. It wasn't easy to keep up with his long-legged stride.

"Ask someone who believes in gods," he said.

"If she's a goddess, she's cruel!" Aerie said. "I felt her kill many women, all at once. They were clones and their souls were all different. She made them die, just by thinking about it. It should have been me who died."

 _I deserve to. It should have been me, not Uncle Quayle_ , Aerie thought.

His footsteps slowed. "You're very strange. I understand there are things worse than death—ask an esp-blocker. But to wish to die now, when you're free? I don't understand. And yet you seem to mean it."

Aerie meant it. It was her body who killed all the women, and she was no better than a murderer. Quayle would never have done anything like it.

"I r-remember, in the underground," Aerie said. "People believe in the Mater Mundi. She gives them hope. But now I've known her. She's p-powerful enough to be a goddess."

"Let's call her a powerful entity. Such are to be no more trusted than the Empire," Xzar said. "She fascinates. For each esper she helps, ten hundred thousand and more go unanswered. You should wonder at her motivations ..."

"S-she's not a god I believe in," Aerie said. They followed the line of a frost-encrusted wall. The fog made it seem she and Xzar were alone in the world. "Avariel believe in a world soul. A planet and everything on it, all bound into the same life." She shivered. Mistworld life was very cold. "All that lives is holy."

"What, even Lionstone?" Xzar needled.

"And Uncle Quayle taught me to believe in Christ the Sorrowing," Aerie said. "The Man who wept with lepers and outcasts, the lowest and least, and died as a criminal. That faith gives people strength ..."

"What about strength to your psionic invisibility?" Xzar asked. He wasn't trying to make a point; he sensed something. He cocked his head to the right. "Listen to the rabbits over there. Make sure they don't see you. Mistport never really sleeps."

Aerie's ears soon echoed his esp's perception. She heard human footsteps on the frosty ground, irregular gaits moving together. She shrank back against the wall, holding her mental shield. These passersby would probably see nothing but a bare wall. Perhaps they were not even malevolent, for wasn't she also out on the streets at this hour with good intentions?

Then she opened her mind's eye. The group of other minds were crudely linked together, a gestalt stronger than the sum of its parts. At least one of them was an esper, Aerie couldn't tell which. The low-level esp joined them into one mass. One mind would be easy to hide from, but as a whole they hungered for any prey.

 _Blood blood BLOOD_ , they chanted, the one word all that concentrated their minds—

Blood addicts. Wampyr were gengineered Imperial shock troops with inhuman power, created by killing men and pumping a synthetic cocktail into their dead veins. The Wampyr fed on human blood. Some Wampyr offered an exchange: blood from a willing human, in return for a sip of the Wampyr's own potent blood. This created a master-slave relationship, addictive and deadly. Wampyr Blood was sold as a black market drug, that gave its victims temporary power and strength and speed; but ordinary humans were not made to handle its potency. Blood addicts were pitiable, desperate, and very dangerous.

Blood addicts in Mistport would be still more so.

This gang roamed the street, ignoring the freezing cold even though their last dose of Blood was almost impotent inside them. Frostbite and hunger gnawed them. They needed trinkets, coin, tech, anything that could be exchanged for Blood. If they couldn't find these, then inflicting violence would occupy them instead.

Aerie stood next to Xzar against the wall, close enough to feel his body heat. His mental invisibility to others was effortless. _Hide_ , she lectured herself fiercely, while the group mind drew closer.

An esper can't hide from another esper, in the end. They came close enough to be visible through the fog: twenty or so men and women, gaunt and ragged, armed with clubs and blades and broken glass. The gestalt pressed down, hunting any signs of life foolish enough to be in this place at this time. They would kill and rob, not necessarily in that order, and could not be turned by empathy or reason.

Aerie's psionic shield bent, and then shattered. And the trail of her mind led them straight to Xzar as well.

The man in the front of the crowd groaned and gestured. The ragged gang turned as one. They surrounded their prey.

Xzar grabbed at Aerie's arm, three fingers tight around her sleeve. It was too quick and harsh for her to get away. "If I threw you to them," he suggested, "the Mater Mundi would probably protect you. That would be interesting. But ... maybe not now."

He forced her behind himself. He conjured up a psi storm with his power. Cobblestones rose from the road, tiles from nearby houses flew down. Xzar held the gang back with the power of his mind, a storm that tried to shatter all that lay before him—and left the space behind him unharmed.

But against the ravening hunger he didn't stand a chance. There were too many of them, and the gestalt stood together. One lone mind couldn't make any difference to their goal. Xzar reached his limits quickly, exhausted. Blood dripped from his ears.

He shrugged, ended the psi storm, and ran toward the gang. It shocked Aerie as much as it did them. People weren't supposed to commit suicide like this, running headlong and unarmed into the middle of the fighters. Their attention snapped to the victim in their midst. Xzar rushed up to one of the bigger men, who swung a length of heavy chain between his thick hands.

And then a long sharp knife appeared in Xzar's hand, and arced to cut a deep red smile across the man's throat.

Espers could feel the pain of others. Espers weren't violent. Aerie screamed at the man's painful death, and the cry drew attention to her. Xzar fought, the long knife striking without pity. He used a glinting surgical blade, that cut like memories Aerie could not bear.

Aerie could only avoid her enemies. The gang was numerous enough to stumble against each other, and she was light-footed. It couldn't last. But she had guardians by then.

The man Xzar killed stood up and fought. The esper controlled him. The dead man flung his chain around the neck of one of the thugs chasing Aerie, and pulled it tight. The strangled woman flung herself in front of Aerie. A sword impaled her, passing through her already dead body, but she did not fall.

A blow caught Aerie's side. She wasn't hurt but her belt and purse fell, and for a moment they scrabbled for the coins instead of her life. Xzar was almost hidden from her now, lashing around like a dervish in the midst of a shapeless crowd.

A ragged figure stood, and attacked Aerie. Aerie tried to run, but there was nowhere to run to. She hit the wall with her elbows. A dirty knife blade lanced toward her.

And a dark man, so fast that he was a blur, leapt down upon their enemies. Aerie saw none of his features but a glint of horrible green eyes, artificially bright like a monster out of legend. He wielded a heavy sword. Fresh blood coated the cobblestones, steaming warm above the frost. This wasn't a man, for no one could fight like this. This was another monster, killing everything that stood in his path.

The fighter broke the circle around Xzar, leaving him alive on the ground. The gang had no chance against this enemy.

"FOR BANE!" the fighter howled a wild battlecry. Aerie could barely understand the words. The voice was inhuman, a painful buzzing sound, a cruel rasp that never came from any mortal throat. She watched, terrified.

Some attacked this new monster and he cut them down. He leapt after those who ran away, and he killed them anyway. In the middle of all the dead Aerie went to Xzar. The esper still held his knife though his arm bled, and his right hand was closed around the wound. He would live, despite the pain and death all around them.

The figure returned to stand over them. Would he kill them as well? He was broad and muscled and eerily shirtless in Mistworld's cold, and plates of golden metal were embedded in his bare torso. His unnatural green eyes burned with some strange inner fire.

He spoke in that same rasping, pitiless voice. "Are you companions of Ourawang, the outlawed child of Bhaal?"

"Yes," Xzar admitted, looking up at him. "I've never seen a Hadenman before. Awfully interesting. I never thought a person's mind could be so much a machine."

Hadenmen. Aerie paused, shocked. They were before her time, but they were the Enemies of Humanity then. One of the reasons why the Empire feared gengineering so. Men who made themselves into more than men, led by the fearsome Lord Bane, cyborgs who swooped down on their golden ships to destroy planets and force humans to become like them. Gods of the Genetic Church, who slaughtered ordinary people like flies. _Be good, or the Hadenmen will get you_.

"I am Adam," the Hadenman rasped. "I watched you, and knew that you would need protection. In payment, you will take me to the Child of Bhaal. For she holds the key to lost Haden."

"Tell me, do you rust?" Xzar got up slowly. "How do you reconcile basal urges with the layers of binary code in your brain? How do you ..."

Aerie felt pain. Besides Xzar, there was another person wounded and alive—and they were in agony. She hastened to the figure on the ground, still breathing laboured breaths. Both legs were cut off at the knees, but she was still alive.

Her ragged furs had made her seem twice her size, but now it was clear she was a child. A dark girl with a gaunt pinched face, barely in her teens, and dying. The craving for her drug, Blood, was still in the front of her mind.

All life is holy, and a child was dying because of her. Aerie staunched the bleeding, pinching off arteries and drawing the girl's clothing into tourniquets. She had a chance; there was still life.

"Ourawang!" Aerie used her comlink. "We need help, we need your regeneration machine!" But the child of Bhaal wasn't responding. Static crackled on the line. "Xzar," she called, "help me carry her!" She scooped up the severed limbs. Regeneration machines could not recreate lost parts, only heal what was there.

Adam spoke over Xzar's flood of questions. "Do not press me, esper. I see to your safety only because it suits my goal."

" _I said, come here!_ " Aerie shouted. The men looked down at the small body.

"She tried to kill you," Xzar noted.

"She's a child," Aerie insisted. "Owan has a regeneration machine on her ship. I can't reach her now—maybe you can find her mind—but the AI will know us. Let's go."

"You talk about a regeneration machine on a public Mistport street?" the Hadenman rasped. He stood back; he wouldn't help. Xzar knelt down, and looked at the dying girl with only a cold interest.

"She will die before that," he said. "I know death. Quick is better than slow."

"No," Aerie said. "If what you say is true, I have power. And I'm a healer."

She remembered the Mater Mundi in all her glory, scouring her out from within with breaking power. She'd stared into the sun. The Mater Mundi had killed, but her power could be used to heal.

Something wondrous. Something terrifying. You're fascinating. Something divine. Touched by things outside yourself. A powerful entity, to be no more trusted than the Empire. Do you want to be a goddess? Tell them you're the Mater Mundi, and they'll crowd to beg for miracles.

Aerie called into the depths of her mind, begging the Mater Mundi to come once more and light her up from within.

Nothing answered back.

She laid hands on the dying girl, felt her agony, and prayed for a miracle. Nothing. _I'm not the Mater Mundi_ , Aerie thought in despair. She knew Xzar was reading her mind. _You were wrong._

 _Xzar_ , she asked, _will you do it? Please?_

The dying girl's mind surrounded Aerie. Her name was Rebekah. She craved the immortal-fierce-invulnerable taste of a few drops of Blood, just a few all she needed. There were older memories, better memories, and Aerie tried to let them cover Rebekah's pain. She held hands with her sister around a summer harvest bonfire, on one of the outlying farms. Too many mouths to feed drove her away on her own, and so she drifted into Mistport.

Aerie saw a child in the forest on a rare sunny day. Rebekah saw the glimmer on a low hanging branch, and stood still and quiet and scarcely breathing. The butterfly unfolded its jewel-bright wings. Let a moment of beauty come in the midst of pain, let her forget.

An avariel child had the same memory, but it was on another planet and another butterfly. Rebekah watched the butterfly in the tree. And then she saw something else in the forest. Another little girl with long fair hair, who looked about the same age and watched the same butterfly. She had wide white wings, and had fluttered down unseen into the forest.

Their eyes met in the mindscape.

"Fairy princess?" Rebekah asked. A strange familiarity overlaid the words. The child-Aerie waited, and the human girl reached out a curious hand to her. Rebekah's eyes widened in wonder as the strange winged girl turned out to be real. They touched, mind to mind and heart to heart. It was a comfort.

The sun set over the forest, though the evening was strangely still warm. Streaks of soft darkness spread across the world. It was always easy to rest after a long day of work.

 _Now I lay me down to sleep ..._

The darkness grew, kind and peaceful. Aerie had forgotten what she was and for what she had come. She would fall asleep with her friend Rebekah, and that would be the end of it.

Then she heard a loud, harsh whistle, and a pinecone hit her on the back of her shoulder. She looked up. A boy sat in the tree, tall and lanky, tossing another cone up and down in his left hand. Like a prisoner, he wore loose clothes held together by soft ties. A dark mark crossed his left temple, a burn.

"Fool," he said. "Don't you know not to merge with a dying mind? She drags you in her wake. Toward her wake, in fact. The wake of the dead."

Suddenly the boy was in front of her, plucking at her sleeve. Aerie was afraid. She did not know his face, and he was no avariel, too tall and gaunt with long harsh bones.

"Come with me," he said. "You should not die." The boy brought discord into the Mistworld forest. He was a quick sharp creature with a mad look in his eyes, made for a prison and not a wilderness. But in him was life.

 _Don't leave me, please_ , Rebekah asked.

Xzar pulled on Aerie's arm, painfully, and in that pain Aerie touched his mind. A mad tangle of threads with no rhyme or reason; but there was a vivd ever-changing vigour to them, a fervour that could not easily die. He flared with curiosity, enthusiasm, a wild love of his freedom.

Aerie was caught between the two voices. She wished to stay with Rebekah's quiet dreaming. If she wished anything she wished that.

 _I did what you wanted_ , Xzar told her. He placed a firm hand on her wings. The child-Aerie screamed. Where he touched, her white wings rotted away. Infection ran loose inside them, and they withered into nothing. Her shoulders burned with old painful scars.

"This is what's real, fairy princess," she heard, and with a sudden snap she was back in the cold Mistport street, crying over the body of a dead child.

Xzar had obeyed her. He used his telekinesis to reach inside the girl's body and stop her heart, quickly and painlessly. _Rebekah. Her name was Rebekah._

"I h-hate Mistworld!" Aerie sobbed. "This s-shouldn't have—it's wrong! She was j-just a child, and Mistport addicted her to Blood. We killed her. And you—" She couldn't help her horror as she looked at Xzar. "You're an esper. We feel others' pain. But you k-killed them—helped kill them all."

"You didn't get very far into the underground, did you?" Xzar said.

"Your coin purse," Adam rasped, and threw it on the ground in front of her. "Do not linger."

Aerie said nothing as the Hadenman led them away. The cold air froze her tears. The Blackthorn tavern was a heavy dark building in the heart of Mistport, taller than any structure around it. The thick walls made it look squat, like a black slug crouched on the landscape.

A burly man was running a cloth over the bar when they entered. A few scattered drunks slept in the corners of the tavern, but for the most part it was deserted. A fire burned heartily at one end of the room, and the heat was a furnace compared to the streets. Dark circles showed under the bartender's eyes, as if he never slept, and the look in his face as he saw the Hadenman wasn't friendly.

"We have a chit from the esper union for a room," Xzar said.

The man scanned the note carefully, then crumpled it up. "First floor, second to the right. You pay your own meals and drinks, and no esper scams."

"T-two rooms," Aerie added.

"And a bowl of boiled water, a needle, and—I would guess catgut thread, here," Xzar said.

"Dripping blood on my floors gives you a cleaning charge," Ribald the bartender said. Xzar was still holding his left arm. Aerie saw now that the black cloth was thick with blood. He was a living creature in pain, and he'd been wounded defending her.

"Let me help," she asked. Xzar sat in the room, cutting his own sleeve away from the wound. It was a long, jagged cut, still bleeding. He was lucky that it was not worse. "I'm a healer, I t-told you."

"I remember telling you not to touch me." He reacted like a hunted animal, quick and sharp. He grimaced as he cleaned the wound for himself, rinsing away blood and dirt. The pain didn't stop him.

"I don't want to touch you. I don't want anything to do with you." The words were cruel, but Aerie didn't want to stop herself. She hated everything that had happened to her. "You're an esper who kills. You use knives, and you're cold inside. You understand death." Aerie couldn't stop her growing horror. Her voice dropped to a whisper. "When you worked for the Empire, who did you work for?"

Espers were property in the Empire. Aerie knew that espers had horrible things done to them, and were made to do horrible things in turn.

 _The cold man reached inside her brain with filthy fingers, and he took up one of his knives._

"You're wrong there," Xzar said. His long fingers twitched their way up his wounded arm. "I never did the Empire's dirty work. I used to do aristocrats', which is the same principle except that they're honest about their ambitious desires. I was an experiment, but not the cold hands in your nightmares. No, not that."

She almost believed him. "Aristocrats aren't allowed to have espers," Aerie said.

"Have you ever tried telling an aristocrat _no_?" Xzar said. "They stitch up rabbits, they make their own weapons. They taught me to sew, but it was mostly dead flesh. If you want the corpse to look alive, subcutaneous stitches on the parts which show; surface stitches fine on the hidden ones. Figure-of-eight stitch, lowered mattress, subcuticular ..." He babbled, drawing the needle to his own arm.

 _It's a defence_ , Aerie realised. A mad mind had become protection against others delving into it, and now Xzar was trying to distract himself from pain.

"You're a fool!" Aerie told Xzar, and stood too close to him on purpose. Adam the Hadenman watched them silently, his arms folded across his chest. "You can't suture your own arm. It d-doesn't matter what you're afraid of. I h-hate confined spaces, because all avariel do and because of the c-cage. I grew up in a cage at the circus. But, when I have to, for p-people I care about, I've ..." She took up the needle herself. "Hold still," she said.

"I said, don't touch me," Xzar muttered, but he looked away and did not resist. "You're crazy. Not that I hadn't already noticed. Did you notice how strange she is, Hadenman called Adam? Your mind is curiously well shielded."

"In the wars," Adam said, "we Hadenmen had no use for espers. We killed them on sight and disintegrated their remains. Even your organs are useless to us."

"Because we could disintegrate your synapses with a stray thought?" Xzar asked cheerfully.

Aerie did her best to ignore the men. Uncle Quayle taught her how to heal people, a long time ago now. Her hands soon found their rhythm. _All that lives is holy. Even Lionstone, even Xzar._ The man was quite ashen below the black markings that moved across his skin. He talked nonsense to himself as a distraction, and his eyes twitched back and forth from her hands on his arm.

"T-these won't fall apart like normal stitches," Aerie said, "b-but they should be easy to take out when the time comes ... or we can use Ourawang's regeneration machine." They should have used it for the child they killed, instead.

"That's a coffin," Xzar said, "I'm not going in there." He stood, turning on his heel and pacing the small room. Aerie cleaned up, preparing to leave.

"Wait." He grabbed at Aerie's sleeve, suddenly turning her to face him. "Come with me. Something you should see."

She should have refused, and Aerie made some muttered protests, but Xzar's outburst of feverish energy pulled her on. He mounted the Blackthorn's steps—steps he had not seen before in his life, either—and went up to the highest floor, which had a small dusty passage to the rooftop.

Chilled, smoke-tainted air swirled around them. The sun was just visible behind the horizon, burning a weak blue-tinted light through the mists. People had begun to walk the streets in the low light, and the sewage had thawed enough to start to flow across the cobblestones. A Mistport morning, savagely cold. At least Aerie was in open air, away from most people.

"At the starport ..." Xzar said. To humour his madness, Aerie glanced where it glittered in the distance. It was just visible from the Blackthorn's height, faint silver metal shining by the dawn's light.

"No. Up there," Xzar guided, and Aerie's avariel sight saw clearly past the clouds.

An esper flew.

Weightless, soaring by her mind's power, scarlet scarf spinning behind her, riding the winds and guarding Mistport from above. She wasn't the only one. Other espers swooped beyond her, a formation of birds in the sky, swift and sure. Aerie had not known that was possible.

On Faenya-Dail, avariel spread their wings and flew above shimmering glass bridges. Aerie lost that world forever. She thought that she would never see flight again.

But Mistworld was strangely beautiful. Here, espers flew. She gazed at them as the sun rose, never looking away.

Then Xzar spoke low, behind her. "Light bones, low gravity world, additional scapulae. Wing dimensions limited by bone structure. The juvenile form is the only one I can guess at, but even so, growth would have been limited. I'm learning about your bones, and I don't think it's surprising that you are an esper." He laughed to himself. He wasn't the only one to probe Aerie's bones. A chill ran down her spine.

"Don't spoil it," Aerie said, and went to her room to rest.

—


	15. Paint the Town Smoking: Imoen

"'Nother wine!" Imoen shouted, and pounded her fist on the table for emphasis. She was having a fine night, yessir, thankyouverymuch. She downed it in one gulp, stood on her feet, and looked to the left. Could her nearest competitor really stand to have one more himself?

His face paled at the thought of another one of Bernard's extra-strength petroleum cocktails. Hopelessly, he tried to down it—and fell flat on the table, snoozing boozily. She'd like to see anyone outdrink Imoen Winthrop. Im scooped up her winnings too fast for anyone to object, and swung on her pack. She was bored again, and had to go.

The mists swirled around her in the night, but the drinks and pick-me-up drugs kept her warm. (Imoen wasn't addicted, she just liked to party now and then.) Her mental map of Mistport wasn't perfect, since it'd been a few years, but it was good enough. Imoen crossed a bridge into Merchants Quarter, stuck to the shadows, and cased her next joint.

Councillor Flass used to live here. Didn't any more, but the house was still big and fancy. And still had those boughs of thick ivy hanging all over the walls, and that little garden gate with the dodgy bricks to the side. Imoen heard a whine, and reached into her pack for a length of real steak she'd collected on her way.

"Whosa good girl? Yes you are!" she cooed quietly over the dog, making a new friend, and realised she was bored again. Up the ivy boughs with her, a glass-cutter to the window, and then a bit of a moment of panic as she saw the two people in bed in the room ...

Imoen dashed out the gate with the dog barking at her heels and amidst yells for the city Watch. She saw a rubbish bin overflowing with dry leaves and clippings; she aimed with her mind.

 _Set things on fire!_

The blaze distracted everyone and brought the Watch in to quell the flames. Imoen was safe enough now in the back of an alleyway, counting over her loot again, adding the pair of wedding rings she'd just nicked to the total. Real gold and quartz in the lady's, good going for little Imoen there. She'd grabbed the rings easy enough off their fingers in bed, but on second thoughts going for the fillings in the man's back teeth hadn't been such a good idea. Never mind!

"You're a pyro now, Imoen?" her old friend Phyl had asked her. Phylida was already an esper; a telepath. She and Imoen had run many a con in the old days, selling fake star maps to tourists, the Angel Islington scam, peddling faux Hob-hound fur. It was the sort of thing most people in Mistport did, on the side. The Empire didn't sentence people to Mistworld for being nice. "That's unusual," Phyl said, "most people show esp earlier. And I can read your mind, underneath. You've been hurt badly of late, even if it doesn't show on the surface."

"I've been fighting the good fight," Imoen said curtly. "Rebel cyberrat, that's me. Not a system I can't hack. Still got the cache I left with you? Thanks, Phyl, you're a real friend. Not like some others I can't count on."

Imoen started on her big project then and there. So many pretty shiny things she'd collected. She counted them again, just for fun; she didn't fear they were gone, as no other pickpocket could hope to get close.

Coin and jewels, Misport currency, pretty things that glittered through Imoen's fingers, rosestone and sapphire. A length of top-quality plastic plumber's line, worth more than its weight in gold on Mistport. A vial of Wampyr's Blood, ounce for ounce more valuable than almost anything else. Real coffee beans. A computer crystal carrying an expensive, deadly virus—Lover Boy. It would screw your systems until they died. A force shield bracelet, mostly charged. A shrunken Hob hound head, genuine article, mounted on platinum backdrop. Two fake Watchmen's badges and a genuine Councillor's pin. Imoen had also stolen Phylida's heart, or at least her virtue, but she hadn't wanted to stay in bed very long. She and Phyl were intermittent lovers in the old days, from Imoen's years in Mistport before she took herself to wider fields of the underground. Nowadays, what was between them didn't feel like such a big deal.

Imoen slipped knockout pills in a glass of wine, borrowed a black velvet mask in a lynx' face design from an unconscious man, and went to a Thieves' Guild elite party to pickpocket from the best—eardrops, false faces, cloak pins, and kisses from the Guildmaster's heiress, Alexa de Fiori, fellow pyrokinetic and thief. She found herself bored again and left the party to cross to Tech Quarter, where this time she nicked a few little cocktails of Getup #9, the better to keep awake. Oh, and two cases of priceless secret plans from Shandalar von Ulgoth, the inventor wizard of Mistport Council, worth a lot on the black market.

She flitted into locked houses and rich people's exclusive parties in Merchants Quarter. She skipped into the worst dives in Thieves Quarter and won drinking contests with the best Mistport had. Sometimes she'd set things on fire to cover her escapes. Then to Guilds Quarter to see what was on offer from the espers. Most espers weren't much for physical goods, but Imoen dropped into a sirens' party to take in the fabulous singing and slow dance with a polter girl. She crossed the River Autumn again and dug up her old caches, coin and pretty things and useful things, most of them hidden well enough to last. Sometimes she hid new things, sometimes even contrived for some young new thief to find instead. She slipped into Merchants Quarter to plunder from the best, getting more to drink at some of the priciest taverns—leaving a number of wealthy patrons bereft of coin and back teeth fillings.

Where to now? Imoen hesitated between a street to Tech Quarter and another to Guilds. Maybe she'd look up some other of her old esper friends. More of Imoen's past haunts flashed over her vision from her comlink; Guilds Quarter it was. Imoen Winthrop had never been all about the wealth, and some espers knew how to have fun. The cyberrat grinned. The more she had to do, the better. More drinking contests to win, shiny things to collect, and hearts to steal. Give her Mistport lights, action, and laughs any time.

—

After Golgotha streets, Mistport should be no trouble.

More fool he to believe that one, Montaron thought.

Thieves Quarter wasn't badly named. He'd found it his kind of place, much as you had to take into account Mistworld's general backwardness. This place was the Empire's shithole, their favourite dumping ground for criminals and rebels, and it was a couple hundred years and more behind the times in tech. Even Merchants Quarter, supposed to be full of luxuries, would've sold for microcredits on Golgotha. It was the fault of the esper freaks too; if they didn't use their powers, normal people would've done more to improve things.

Montaron stepped into the bar. He knew a dive five miles away. There was a hefty bouncer at the door wrapped in filthy white furs, wearing a merc's scalplock—one fool who'd probably fight like he thought bulk counted for everything, though Monty wouldn't want to make him draw the sword on his back. Best not to make trouble.

Two men in the corner of the Hob Hound's Head exchanged something quietly. Montaron knew it would be a bad idea to look any closer. Coins clinked as a pair of greasy dice spun on a table. A bored barmaid smoked something strong enough to fill the room with smog. Mercenaries in similar-looking leathers chatted to each other, their eyes sweeping the room. Prostitutes in tatters and feathers argued loudly about something. Montaron slid a coin over the counter and sat quietly by himself.

His kind of place. Go anywhere, do anything, provided the credit was right and he wouldn't be double-crossed. He was glad he still had his sword. Stronger than I look, he'd tell them, professional legbreaker. They wouldn't dare take him lightly.

One of the whores stepped down from her stool. She was short—no, she was a dwarf, like Montaron. Figured. Mistworld had all the freaks. He tried not to stare at her too obviously. There had been Mistport coin in the pockets of Ourawang's coat, and Montaron let the beginnings of a fantasy stir him. Some of these girls weren't bad looking, as far as he could tell below the paint and feathers, and anyway looks weren't what you paid for.

The argument between the women over a coin purse shifted to a louder pitch. They flew at each other with fingernails, and then one of them pulled a dagger from somewhere and stabbed the other in the chest. She fell to the ground. The dwarf girl crept up quietly, pulled the dagger out and put it back several times to make sure the woman was dead, and went to picking through her possessions. No one in the bar paid any attention.

 _No. Not a fat chance_ , Montaron thought, and set his attention very definitely on his drink. If one of the women propositioned him he might just scream. He ordered another. Then he felt for his purse and panicked.

One of the patrons here was a better pickpocket than him, and he hadn't any clue which it was. Maybe the waitress. A big guy who checked out what was going on at intervals was probably the joint's owner. Montaron grimaced. He knew this game. Get a few thieves in to operate, get customers to order more than they could pay, and bleed them for more than they owed. Monty didn't want to think about what this joint did to people who looked like they couldn't settle accounts.

He watched around himself, not taking any more drink, sticking to his corner. Even his boots and Ourawang's coat would probably be worth stealing here. Montaron gripped the hilt of his sword. At least they hadn't taken that.

When he was certain that the big guy was in charge, Montaron walked over to him, trying not to look intimidated. The man looked like a gengineered freak crossed with some sort of gorilla—it was the bristles of black hair on his low brow that did that—and his fishbelly-like skin had a greenish tinge that probably wouldn't go away in daylight. The barmaid had called him Larze.

"What do you want, little mouse?" the hulking monster said. Montaron had hoped to have the first word.

"Larze, I'm after a job of work," Montaron said. "I was a bouncer in Golgotha's worst, and I'm all for earning coin here. Figure you're one who knows such things."

"Golgotha? Golgotha is nothing to Mistworld. This is what we think of Golgotha!" The bar owner spoke loudly, drawing much too much attention to the show. Larze placed a dirty glass on his bench. Then he brought a fist down on it. Montaron ducked as the glass shattered.

He'd been the first to show weakness, and he knew that would cost him.

"You think you're a fighter? I could drink you down in a gulp," Larze boasted. Montaron had heard this exact crap before. He was almost relieved that Mistworld wasn't so different. "From Golgotha! Larze once took on an Investigator and walked away."

Investigators were the coldest bastards, and greatest warriors, that the Empire had to offer. If the Empire wanted someone to kill a planet's worth of terrifying alien monsters, they sent an Investigator. The planet's worth of terrifying alien monsters wouldn't stand a chance. They trained Investigators from early childhood, and only a few survived the process.

But what did Montaron care about some oversized gengineered freak's boasting?

"Which Investigator?" Monty asked.

Larze bared his teeth. "So you have a little guts, little man," he said. "I was a marine. One of the Empire's best. They let us take advantage, get away with changing ourselves more than other men, and so we became unbeatable in battle." The teeth were sharpened to points in the greenish mouth. Maybe they'd been made to grow that way. "Then the bastards tried to cut us loose, said we weren't human any more. So we rose up and rebelled. I fought the Investigator long enough to let my squad get away, and then I ran for it. Didn't catch his callsign, but he was a big cunt with tattoos. I still have the scars." Some of Larze's customers nodded, as if they'd heard this story many times before.

Larze leaned over the bar, bringing his fat face closer to Monty's level. "Going to pay for your drink, kid?"

"You know well enough why I won't, you thief," Montaron said. "I know the game."

 _I'm here to build up a rep_ , he thought, _show them what I can do and get out to something better._

"He marches in here and calls us a den of thieves," Larze said, so loudly that the entire bar stared at this piece of performance art. "Insult to this bar's honour, hey. What do we usually do with mouthy customers?"

"Bake them in pies!" howled the killer dwarf whore.

"Sell them to cloneleggers!" one of the drinkers toasted.

"This little one wouldn't be worth anything," Larze taunted.

"You're looking for a fighter," Montaron said, "and that's why I'm here. Any more words and I'll start to think you're afraid."

Larze spat deliberately on the side of his bar. "Come to the yard. Betting opens now."

Montaron waited in the rough arena with his sword drawn, and tried to ignore the bets that counted on not who would win, but how long it would take Larze to defeat him.

 _Master Melmotte had me trained. I'm no fresh circuit to this business_ , Monty thought. Fighting bigger opponents was his specialty. It pretty much had to be.

"Let's do this," Montaron snarled, and the oversized green gorilla made his move.

Larze's greatsword was pitted with age and use, but the edge was still razor sharp. It might have been Imperial-issue steel, once. He lunged forward, efficiently, and Montaron sidestepped away.

The larger they were, the slower they moved. And the harder they fell, Montaron told himself. But this guy was fast for such a big one. Montaron treated him cautiously, taking his time. He tried not to listen to the jeers.

 _If I win, it's worth a job. They'll all respect me._

Larze fought with street rules, no rules. His sword strokes went in all directions. Monty dodged and scuffed up some dirt. He flung a handful of something wet and dirty in Larze's face, blinding him for a moment. Street rules, everything counted.

The big man shook it off. He wasn't even mad, Montaron could tell. A real professional. Larze kept going, sloughing the last of the mud off his face. Montaron kept an eye on the big gorilla's sword and started to put the patterns together. _He's a little slower on his right, old injury maybe. Likes to go for a two-one beatdown._

When Montaron learnt how to use a sword, Melmotte sometimes came in to watch his lessons. He'd work harder than ever to please the man who took him in when no one else would, do his best to show what he'd learnt and then spar with different people for hours beyond exhaustion.

"How is the new recruit coming along?" Melmotte would ask, in his familiar brown double-breasted coat, his ever-present unlit cigar in his hand.

"Monty's not worthless," Garst the trainer would say. "He won't make a gladiator, but he lasts longer than most. Slippery little bugger. Soon I'll make a man of him."

Melmotte, busy as he was, took the time to check on Montaron—one of the lowest guys in his organisation. Montaron would have sworn there wasn't a man in Melmotte's service who would betray him. But somehow Melmotte's organisation fell, with it Melmotte himself, and Montaron was left out in the cold. His normal luck.

"I'm trusting you, Montaron," Melmotte said once, "to fight when it can't be avoided, to win when it's needed, and come back to tell all the information you know."

Montaron let Larze move in, let the gorilla think he had him. Then he made his move— _two-one, go right and stretch in_. Montaron aimed for the groin. But instead Larze was faster than he'd let on, and so Montaron scored a cut from thigh to knee.

First blood to him, and Montaron tried not to betray how much that cost him. Larze stumbled, but recovered quickly. Maybe something to do with being a gengineered freak.

"Blooded, Larze!" someone called from the audience, and from the clink of coin changing hands it sounded like the betting had shifted some.

"Happy now?" Monty grunted. "You found a fighter. I tell you I'm looking for—work!" He spun on his heel, using a bend from his contortionist da, damn his bones. His sword slashed the bottom of Larze's meaty arm, opening a cut.

But Larze was still smiling, out of his sharpened teeth. He was silent. He only fought.

He was blasted strong. Montaron took it as a compliment that the bloody man was actually trying now. There was nowhere to turn from the big sword, which seemed to be everywhere at once.

 _No choice, dammit!_

Montaron tried to press Larze on his right, the way he ought to. But this time the man wasn't giving any more ground. Larze had the reach and he left no gaps. Montaron was nearing his limits. He knew it, and Larze knew it too.

 _At least let me go out—_

One blow he didn't anticipate with the heavy sword was all it took. The pain was sudden and fierce as if he'd been cut in two, and Montaron fell back into the dirt gasping for breath, too winded to get up. He was dead. He was a dead man.

They stole his boots. Montaron was too insensible to move or protest. They stripped him of coat, purse, and the sword Melmotte gave him. And they threw him down outside in the cold rubbish heap, like so much discarded rubbish.

They didn't even bother to kill him. Montaron heard their laughter echo around him. Someone put the boot in, cracking his ribs. Then they were gone, leaving him out in the cold.

His face lay over a midden, landed in the shit again. Literally. And the Mistport chill sunk into Montaron's bones, as if he would never get up again.

—


	16. Quest for the Lost Legend: Ourawang

Mistport wasn't new to Owan, but it seemed like the sewage problem got worse every time she visited. She walked alone through Merchants Quarter, and something in her face and body language made everyone she passed scuttle out of her way.

She knew where she was heading, though she hadn't travelled there before. Bhaal Family money had set this place up, and Ourawang was there to call in her chips. The Bhaal name still had power, and then there was Ourawang herself.

 _Start an Empire-wide rebellion with: my sword, my gun, my ship, a cranky AI, a cyberrat-esper, an uber-esper, a terrorist esper, and a clonelegger._ She didn't like the idea of so many espers, and she wasn't impressed with Montaron either. (He'd be back and begging soon, Owan figured. After he found out how rough Mistworld was.) But this was no time to be choosy. She'd get back in touch with her sworn sister later, after she'd given Immy time to cool off.

For all Owan did to hide it, there was a chill up her spine at the thought of this place. She wouldn't have brought company even if she could, in case she'd give too much away to them. But she needed allies, dammit, and there was one man who could help her now.

"Day before yesterday's nut buns!" a teenage girl called cheerfully from a family bakery. She shook out her floury apron in the street. "Come and get them while they're edible!" A small line formed before her, jostling for the bread. Owan wondered what kind of nuts, and decided she didn't want to know.

The Abraxus Information Centre rented the floor above the bakery, and didn't have a sign to advertise. People found it in other ways. Owan took the rickety wooden stairs, scattering old paint dust around her. She shouldered her way through the door, not knowing what she'd see.

"Ourawang, child of Bhaal. My children said you were coming." A toothy old man curled his lips back to make a wolfish face. His long white hair hung in lank greasy strings, like unwashed fur. He looked behind her down the stairs. "No bad doggies with you? No doggies? —BAD DOG!" he yelled, and hit himself on the arm to shut himself up. "Call me Dradeel. Highly displeased to meet you, all that."

Owan wasn't paying attention to him. The attic was filled with children, strapped and restrained to dirty beds. Some were no more than toddlers, others teenagers. Many were deformed in different ways. Needles pierced their wasted arms below the restraining straps, forcing a nutrient drip into them. Some of them stirred as if they were in pain. Others clawed at their restraints, or stared into space with wide bleak eyes. An old man who looked more like a janitor than a nurse walked between them, changing catheters and nutrient tubes.

This was obscene, and Owan couldn't stand by and watch. She drew her sword. Dradeel had walked away to a table piled with papers, his back turned to her. She advanced on him.

 _Children. There are some things I can't abide in my sight._

"Bhaal Family money built Abraxus. I didn't know until now," she said, "but I'll end it."

As she raised her sword, she felt rather than saw the children's eyes on her. A chill suddenly gripped her, body and mind. Owan knew esper mind tricks when she felt them. She looked back. Some of the children had risen, staring at her out of huge eyes in their emaciated faces. She felt their menace surround her.

"Easy now," Dradeel said, "don't hurt her, my dears. The Bhaalchild doesn't understand. My children love me, you see," he said to Owan, "and they won't let me come to harm. Settle down, Dili." He crossed to a small girl with veins that stood out like ropes in her skin. "I'll give you a sweetie. In Mistworld, you see, this is the best anyone can do for my children. Deformed espers, idiot savants. Their families sell them to me when they can't care for them, and others I find on the streets cast away like so much rubbish. I have a use for them. The restraints are there to stop them clawing out their eyes, when they see something particularly terrible." His hand lingered on a small boy's scarred face.

"Now, are you going to stand there holding that sword, or do you want our help after all?"

Owan lowered her right hand. _If I have the chance to do something about this, I will_ , she promised herself. The children's ill-will followed her like a cloud of gloom.

"Do you have anything for our friend Ourawang, Mervin?" Dradeel asked.

"The black spider," cried the boy. "It's perched above the city. It's woven its web inside the husk of its victims. It devours, and demands yet more worshippers. It's coming to Mistport."

Dradeel sighed, patted his head, and moved on to the next child. "Never mind that. There's always a horrifying disaster on its way to Mistworld. But my children have never been any good at _when_."

A girl who couldn't have been more than five opened wide brown eyes and lisped.

"Destiny thwallows you, daughter of Bhaal, and she won't vomit you until you're dead," the five-year-old's sweet voice said. "You'll drive forward with a thword in hand, overfrow the Empire, and when it'th over you'll die alone, far from your friendth, with nothing you ever really wanted."

Owan's fist clenched in shock, despite herself. Xzar's words to her had been almost identical, and for a mad moment she let herself wonder if there was a conspiracy between the crazy esper and this place.

 _Probably not. It doesn't matter. I will topple Lionstone's Empire in recompense for my outlawing_ , Ourawang thought, _and damn whatever happens afterward._

"You must know what I really want to know," she told Dradeel, hoping no one had noticed her moment of weakness.

"Of course. Come this way. Petrine's good at finding the lost, including those who don't want to be found." Dradeel walked to a tall girl with two missing hands. A sheen of sweat coated her scrawny arms. Next to her, the janitor gently drew a cold cloth across a shaking boy's face.

Dradeel bent over the girl, whispering something, and tightened the straps around her elbows. The pale stumps of her arms twitched. From the look of the scars on them, her hands had been cut off. "Come on, Petrine," Dradeel said, and rustled a sweet wrapper next to her ear.

"You seek the lost legend," Petrine said, so softly that Owan had to lean her head close to hear. "The professional rebel, the man last seen on Cold Rock. The one whose name the Empire still fears. The one you want to use to draw people to your side.

"Keldorn Firecam." Petrine smiled weakly.

"That's right," Owan said. "He's got to be on Mistworld. The only place he could be, if he's alive. Tell me where Keldorn Firecam is."

The girl's mouth parted to babble something else, and Owan didn't understand it at all until she realised it was Petrine trying to laugh.

"Keldorn Firecam is closer than you think," Petrine said. She jerked her head leftwards. "Just look over there ..."

"He's in the Guilds Quarter?" Ourawang said. The stifling attic was windowless, but she'd a good sense of direction.

Petrine managed a few more breathless laughs. In the corner of Owan's eye, the janitor stopped moving. "No, silly. He's over there. He's our janitor."

The janitor's broom dropped to the floor. He clutched his hands to his head like a madman. He looked old and frail, at least twice Keldorn Firecam's age. "No!" he whined, and the high thin tone of his voice was nothing like a legendary hero's. "She knows not what she's saying, it's not true! Sometimes, the children get it wrong! My name is Jobe Ironhand!" The old man dropped to his knees beside Petrine's cot.

"Haven't I always been kind to you?" he asked. His frail voice made him sound more like a child than anyone here. A senile old bat, Owan would have said, no one she would ever waste her time upon.

"You've been kind to all of us," Petrine said. "We'll miss you. But we need you to protect us now."

"I'm an old man. I can't protect anyone ..." the janitor whined. He bent to pick up his broom. He swept around the bed with a palsied shake.

Owan couldn't imagine this old bat protecting anyone either, but it was his name she wanted him for. She slipped an arm around his shoulder, not intending to let him escape.

Dradeel's head snapped back, and he came whirling over to their direction. "My janitor was _Keldorn Firecam_? Children! Is this true? Can it be? I swear, no one tells me anything. Now I have to hire a new janitor. Serve you right if the new one comes out of the sweets budget. Bad doggies, all of you! Get out of here, Bhaalspawn!"

Owan dragged her new companion through the Mistport streets, the cold wind whistling through her cloak. Keldorn Firecam looked as skinny as the last bone from a chicken dish, and hunched over he was small and frail. Maybe the old man'd be a little taller if his back wasn't so twisted and fallen over itself. His prominent nose had been broken several times in the past, and there were other scars on his face, now Owan bothered to look closely.

"I'll put you through my regen machine," she volunteered quietly, "so Keldorn Firecam will be back good as new."

The old man suddenly wrenched away from her, showing strength Ourawang hadn't realised he still had. He stood there shivering on the bare street. "Keldorn Firecam died on Cold Rock, and never came back," he said. "There's only Jobe Ironhand, and he isn't good for anyone any more. Old Jobe Ironhand was kind to the children, and that's all he wanted at the end of his days. Just that, he wanted."

Even regeneration machines couldn't cure some things, such as missing parts on the inside or outside, or other wounds too old to heal, but Owan didn't say so. She simply took off her cloak and draped it around the old man's shoulders, as he stood there shivering.

"Come with me," Owan said. She stretched her muscles, warming herself ready for action. "My first errand, I'm chasing down some cash backers."

Six men and women, six of the powers that be in Mistport. Six movers and shakers, cutthroats in the literal and metaphorical sense, who'd been sponsored by Lord Bhaal back in the day. An information network, since risen to greatness.

There was Galvarey, spymaster and information broker, who controlled ten thousand ears and sold to the highest bidder. Captain Havarian, ex-pirate, ex-rogue, who kept a finger in most pies of port traffic, up the River Autumn and through the starport. Lehtinan, a landlord on paper, who owned a network of Mistport's worst slums and used his properties as sweatshops, brothels, and other things that kept people awake at night. Madame Min, a supplier in the people business, slaver and pimp. Doctor Niemain Darkhold, monopolist in medical supplies by day and clonelegger by night. And Lady Lilith Lurraxol, Mistport's number one banker, who gouged her customers as she wished.

"Do you have an appointment?" the ice-blond secretary asked, unobtrusively shifting his hand toward the concealed knife on his hip. "If you don't, I'm afraid Lady Lilith is booked solid for the next few months."

"I'm Owan, child of Bhaal. My Family's money paid to set her up in business. So I'm here for the board meeting."

The secretary sneered. "You'll have to leave, before someone makes you."

 _Boost_ , Owan subvocalised, and the blood rushing through her veins suddenly burned like quicksilver. She drew her sword and cleaved through the table, twelve inches of ironwood, before the secretary could breathe again. She stood over him, and he didn't dare go for the weapon.

"... They're in the Rosewood Room over there," he squeaked, and Owan drew Keldorn Firecam along in her wake.

The men and women at the table glanced up as Ourawang burst through the door, and their five bodyguards instantly responded to the intrusion. Owan, still in boost, punched the first into the second, kicked out the legs from under the third, and slammed the hilt of her sword under the fourth's ribs. She made them stay down, moaning and groaning.

But the fifth guard decided to threaten Keldorn Firecam instead. He stepped around Keldorn's back and held a sword to his throat.

Owan paused, her blade raised. In boost she was unstoppable, fast enough to kill him before he could harm Keldorn, or at least before he could harm Keldorn very much. The old man sagged against the arm holding him up.

A woman with smooth white hair clapped her hands at the table. Her words came out slow syllable by slow syllable, in Owan's heightened awareness from boost. "Surrender, Child of Bhaal, or we'll have to kill your companion."

Keldorn reached behind himself, to the man's groin, and suddenly squeezed ...

Ourawang saw the look of unimaginable pain and suffering form on the bodyguard's face. His sword arm wavered for a moment. She stepped forward, grabbed the bodyguard, and dislocated the arm. He fell with a groan beside Keldorn Firecam.

 _So the old rebel has some life in him after all_ , she thought.

"Any more bodyguards?" Owan said. She shifted out of boost, but the rush was still with her. How she'd missed having a good clean fight, nothing but her strength and her sword against opponents laid out beside her. "I could use more exercise."

The unshaven man who must be Captain Havarian fingered his scarlet collar, a little obviously. He was an esper, but Owan would dare him to try his mind tricks on her. He let Lady Lilith do the speaking.

"Spare us your melodrama," Lilith Lurraxol said. She had a long, pointed nose, and her teeth flashed like pearls when she spoke. "It's been a long time since we were planted here with Bhaal funding, my dear woman. We have scratched and clawed our own way up to our present position. We owe the victory to ourselves."

"Where's Galvarey?" Owan asked. She counted five, not six. Lady Lilith and her smooth white bun; Doctor Nieman with wet red lips above a curled goatee; Madame Min behind a privacy veil; Lehtinan, a curiously colourless man in a pale brown suit; and Havarian, tilting back his chair and smiling to himself in amusement.

"He lets us know his wishes remotely, dear," Lilith said. There was a faint note of bitterness in Lilith Lurraxol's voice, and Owan took it as a hint of weakness. From everything she'd heard in rumour, Galvarey had risen far above all the rest. He was an untouchable snake with a tendency to gloat. She'd have to fix that, later.

"Then I want an open line of Mistworld credit," Owan said. "I'm raising a rebellion. I have the legendary Keldorn Firecam ..." She didn't gesture to the old man, not willing to identify him with the legend. "An esper touched by the Mater Mundi, other allies, and a starship. Mistworld exists in constant danger from the Empire, and you can't afford to hide away here. The time's come to bring Lionstone and her rotten line down, once and for all."

Doctor Niemain's plump pink fingers twirled his goatee, never stopping, never disarranging its meticulous curl. "Twenty years ago," he said, "The legendary Keldorn Firecam stood before us on a similar mission, young and full of fire. Many prominent citizens gave him what he asked for. He went out and was promptly defeated in a thousand battles."

Owan felt, rather than saw, the old Keldorn stiffen miserably behind her.

"Times have changed," Owan said. "I'm a child of Bhaal. If you don't know what that means, it's time you were reminded."

"And so it comes to violent threats," Madame Min said, with a voice behind her veil high and syrupy and disturbingly like a small child's.

"It's not like you can't afford it," Owan said cheerfully, "and if it turns out I take too much—just send as many armies as you like. That's all. Thank you for your time. Send my regards to Galvarey, and tell him I'll call if I feel like it. I'll see myself out."

Keldorn followed her quietly through the streets, shuffling and bent.

"You'll die," he warned, "and so will all who follow you. Just like they all died for me.

"But I don't care any more."

—


	17. Deal with a Devil: Phaere

Phaere Despana roughly scraped a towel through her wet hair. Several supply contracts had taken longer than she'd expected to look into, and then there was the matter of her upcoming marriage. The cold shower had woken her up again, and she'd make her secretary bring her coffee. Made just the way she liked it, or heads would roll. Preferably literally.

She was on edge and snappish, and the work piling up on her desk didn't help. She told herself that there was nothing wrong with her concentration, nothing at all.

Once she was daring enough to put on a Sister of Mercy's disguise and go as a hooded nun to the gladiator cells. She had the passkey to Illasera's quarters, and arrived the minute after the fight ended. Her lover stunk of victory and a thick coating of sweat. She'd allowed Phaere to push her to the showers and slip her armour off her back. They dragged each other under the cold water, and Phaere pressed her lover until she yielded to her. Phaere's fingers twisted in Illasera's hair, forcing her underwater, and her teeth nipped down from Illasera's neck.

Phaere didn't want to be trapped into this marriage with Corthala, but time was running out. She'd given orders to keep Valygar Corthala entirely sedated in his room. Her mother didn't even bother to counteract them.

She jerked in surprise as her personal implant chimed with a loud alarm. Ardulace Despana, demanding her daughter's immediate attention. The jangling tones exactly summed up Ardulace's personality, Phaere thought.

 _Present yourself at these coordinates, daughter. Utmost secrecy and urgency. You will be here immediately._

 _As you command, Mother_ , Phaere replied. She did her best to ignore the alarm while she pulled on her clothing, and fought against the temptation of making Ardulace squirm with her lateness. The coordinates were the Family basement. This was most likely a power play, and an irritating one at that.

Phaere straightened the braid on her left-hand glove as she walked from the private lift. Despana only: she'd had thumbprints, genetic samples, and retina scans on her way here to prove it, all rushed into thirty seconds. She stepped through a teleport portal to shift all of five metres downstairs, into the Family's most secure storage.

She blinked. It had changed since last she was here. Circuit wiring thickly lined the walls, twisting up to the secure exit and stopping short there. Her mother Ardulace, tense with impatience and a stiff laced basque, waited next to a stretcher. Valygar Corthala's body lay there, breathing faintly and dead to the world. He was strapped tightly down.

"How dare you keep me and our allies waiting," Ardulace snapped.

It was obvious what this altered design meant. Shub's mechanical tendrils, reaching into House Despana. The Enemies of Humanity. Artificial intelligences who wanted all the Empire to be destroyed, and replaced by their cold dead machines.

Phaere nodded obediently. "It was unavoidable, Mother. Shall we go?"

They passed through another entrance, which scanned their bodies. A mechanical voice required Phaere to lay aside her miniature disrupter and boot knife. She felt naked without them, and she understood the reasons for this were psychological. Nothing she could have aimed at the plasteel screen before her could have damaged the distant AIs.

A blue steel stylised head hovered on a black background. "Ardulace Despana, identified. Phaere Despana, identified. Valygar Corthala, identified. Have you been briefed on this meeting, Phaere Despana?"

"No," Phaere said, before Ardulace could speak for her. "Please explain."

"We have promised you technology in return for information," the machine's buzzing voice said. "An even exchange. We require security. Behold, the first delivery of our contract."

Phaere took her time to review the specifications that crossed the screens. It was a disastrous idea to let yourself be rushed on a deal. Shub was twenty years ahead of Humanity on tech, they said, and she could believe it. A crystal disrupter cannon, far advanced on anything Phaere had ever heard about. The Empress would pay richly for this, to use it on aliens and rebels. She studied it until she could have copied out the key components by memory.

"Are you finished, dear?" Ardulace grated.

"Forgive my slowness, Mother, but it would be truly remiss of me to accept without verifying," Phaere said. _Take your time_ , she told herself, a prickle of cold sweat at the base of her neck. Dealing unarmed with the Enemies of Humanity had that effect.

"This offering is acceptable," Phaere said. A crystal containing the blueprints dropped on the table.

"This is nothing to us. We have much that are greater," Shub buzzed. "We want the alien stardrive, and we will give you wonders enough to destroy all your enemies."

Phaere didn't reach to take the blueprints yet. "What further security do you require from us? We have already granted you access to our House," she said. The Empire would execute all of House Despana and burn and salt the remains, if they found out.

"You've heard of Ghost Warriors," the gleaming face on the screen whispered.

The bead of cold sweat on the back of Phaere's neck grew and spread downward. Ghost Warriors were human corpses of Shub's enemies, reanimated and held together by wires and circuitry. Used for psychological terrorism, and feared by Imperial armed forces everywhere.

"This is secret information," the mechanical voice continued. "We have improved the Ghost Warrior process. We can now create Furies, the teeth of the dragon. Androids alike to humans, passable in a crowd. A metal body, overlaid with flesh.

"This is the exchange. We first require the skin to make a Fury ..."

Valygar Corthala, strapped to a stretcher and sedated. He was Ardulace's sacrifice to Shub, then. They were going to marry her to a man who was a monster wearing someone else's skin.

"You objected to him," Ardulace said, smiling coldly. "This version at least will be obedient."

Phaere opened her private comm channel. She tried not to listen to her mother's gloating.

 _I have another deal for you_ , she subvocalised.

Ardulace frowned. "What's the delay?" she asked, her nagging abrasive. She glared at the screen. "Put Corthala below the knife. He will be a spy for Shub and a sign of our profitable bargain. Do it!"

Phaere stepped close to her. Then, she unwound the braid from her glove and pulled it tightly around Ardulace's neck.

The elaborate braid was made from a strip of cloned tissue from Phaere, turned into leather. The organic material would show up on no scans, and formed a strong cord, strong enough to strangle a human trachea.

Illasera, once, had given her such good advice for hidden weapons, and listened to her ambitions of _one day, one day soon_ ...

"The time's come, Mother," Phaere said. "Shub agreed to an alternate deal. You will be their spy. Not, of course, that you will be conscious of it."

Ardulace screeched like a banshee and clawed at the rope around her neck.

"How dare you, you little beast!" she snarled. "Let me go at once!"

 _She's a little slow to catch on_ , Phaere thought. _I should have done this years ago._

"You've made your point, Phaere! Release me and I'll reward you. How would you like your own planet?" Ardulace gasped and moaned. Her fingers were slack like sausages as they clutched at the noose. The threats and promises were as empty as her closing windpipe.

"A curse on you!" Ardulace wheezed. "May you know agony and the hatred of all the Empire before you die. Unnatural child!"

At least, that was what Phaere thought Ardulace said. It was hard to work out the details, as her mother finally stopped breathing once and for all.

"I'm not an unnatural child," Phaere said, to herself. "I'm what you made of me, Mother. You shouldn't criticise your own work."

"You humans belabour yourself with so much delay," the Shub representative said. Phaere could have sworn that there was gloating in the edge of the computer's voice. "As agreed, we'll make her into something more interesting. Pity about the bruises you left on her neck."

Phaere steeled herself and watched. She had sat in the Arena audiences many times. _For Illasera._ She could bear this, and be glad that her vengeance was gratified. The gleaming knives cut into Ardulace's dead body, cutting away her skin inch by inch. What was left wasn't recognisable as human, a bloody mass.

And the Fury from Shub stood up and spoke in a human voice, covered with Ardulace Despana's skin. It looked and moved exactly like Phaere's mother.

"Good. Sign these," Phaere said, and offered the Fury the records that would give her full day-to-day control over all House Despana. What she'd always wanted.

"Allow us to dispose of the remains," Shub's artifical voice asked. Valygar Corthala still snored in the background.

Phaere shrugged, and turned away from what was left of her mother.

—

Valygar woke up, swearing. He thought he'd escaped. He knew he hadn't. Despana bounty hunters found him and brought him down. He hadn't even wanted his Family property, but it was his doom.

What had happened after that was a blur of falling into unconsciousness. Valygar got up from the bed and realised he was in some sort of spaceship, travelling fast. There weren't any controls that he could access. It was a floating prison. He gripped a chair between his hands and twisted. He was frustrated and still weak from whatever they'd given him, and he badly wanted to hit something.

He felt horrible, as if something terrible had happened to him while he was out, and he couldn't remember what.

He found the electronic message, and jabbed open the switch. If they meant to kill him in space, then let the Corthala line die this way.

 _Corthala,_ it read to him, _we were married yesterday. You were heavily sedated at the time. I wanted this as little as you, but I realised it was necessary for my business needs. If and when I decide to create a heir to my line, I'll use the body banks to combine our genetic material._

 _You are now travelling to Virimonde, a backwater pastoral planet. We hold a forty percent market share in beef, beans, and bread across the Empire. Virimonde is a large world, with acres of pasture and assorted unspoilt forests. My sources tell me you enjoy nature._

 _You may take as much, or as little, interest in the Lordship as you please. You may go hunting, wandering, or remain in the Standing. Your assistants will obey all orders, within reason. I do not expect to see you again._

 _Regards,_

 _Phaere Despana._

Valygar swore some more. He sunk into the chair, holding his head between his hands. There was nothing else he could do.

—


	18. Ill: Aerie

She was tired down to her bones, and it was only the first day in Mistport hospital.

Aerie knew at least two things now. One was, never ask to be treated at Mistport hospital unless you were going to die either way. Two was, never underestimate a Mistworlder's abilities to make a living. Dead patients had their pockets rifled and there were whispers of a clonelegging ring who bought bodies. Not that any of that profit made it back to the hospital.

Mistport hospital was run like a rebel outpost; they didn't so much as interview their healers before setting them to work. Aerie learnt on the job in the emergency ward. She and other espers used telepathy to calm people down, because the hospital couldn't afford the anaesthetic. The walls of the place were a peeling-paint pus colour, closing in claustrophobically on everyone inside. If anyone had ever tried to introduce the healers to washing their hands, they'd long since forgotten. Many desperate people came to the hospital, and most of them would never recover, no matter what Aerie tried to do. No matter how hard she worked. She didn't have the strength.

 _Dying children, burn-blind men, hungry weeping women, worshipping, begging for a miracle ..._

Perhaps she'd get used to it.

She knocked quietly on Xzar's and Adam's door, out of a sense of duty, hoping they wouldn't hear or that they weren't there. Xzar had planned to travel all around Mistport.

When she entered, Adam the Hadenman stood like a statue next to the window, his arms folded. The hard chiseled planes of his chest gleamed almost as much in the firelight as his metal parts. Xzar was curled up in the chair, breating shallowly, his eyes closed. He'd bought a new cloak from somewhere, a virulent acidic green with scarlet lining.

He woke up as she approached. "Oh, it's you. You and I have to see more of Mistworld. I found out we can take a farm cart to the forests. You'd like to see trees and moss and open free land, wouldn't you? They say that the Hob hounds are dangerous. If we fed you to them, the Mater Mundi would probably protect you. I even heard there are rabbits in the wild. Let's go." Xzar tried to get up, but fell back to the armchair. His forehead was sticky with sweat, and his eyes burned with fever. "I'm tired," he said in surprise, "but tomorrow we'll go beyond the city. Come out with me, fairy princess."

He'd suggested feeding her to Hob hounds in the same breath as seeing the land. After being trapped on Golgotha so long, Aerie had longed for a natural place not yet destroyed by human malice and greed.

"You're ill," she said. "Let me see your arm."

Xzar tugged away from her. "There's nothing wrong with me. I'll get over it soon."

"He ate street food today," Adam rasped, in a tone that suggested Xzar had actually managed to shock a Hadenman.

Aerie didn't need to be a telepath to get a mental image of a mad esper wandering Mistport's streets, ecstatic over anything and everything. It was good that Adam had volunteered to be with them, for Ourawang's sake.

"T-thank you for looking after him," she stuttered. "Has he vomited?" Adam shook his head. "You need to let me check your arm, Xzar, in case the cut's infected," Aerie lectured. It took her some convincing before he'd roll up his sleeve, especially since he was delirious. The stitches looked to be healing.

 _A mild fever._ Perhaps it was something he'd eaten, or a Mistworld virus he had no resistance to. "Drink this t-tea," Aerie said. "It should pass soon enough. Adam, can you make sure he has plenty to drink? Boil the water first."

"Menial tasks. You must soon bring me to the child of Bhaal," Adam said.

"We can't control what Ourawang d-does," Aerie said. She didn't believe Owan would abandon them, not after the things they had endured in the same dark place, but Owan hadn't come to her aid when she last asked for it.

Xzar was drowsing again over the teacup. Aerie rescued it, and stood over him. She was tired herself, and she'd seen many people injured much worse than he today. She resented him and was slightly frightened of his madness, and perhaps those emotions leaked out as she shook his shoulder, leaning over him.

"Stop. Don't touch me! I said, don't touch me," he raved. "Do you hate me that much for what I did? You asked me to. It was a mercy kill." He stopped the young girl's heartbeat, when she was dying painfully. Aerie broke away from him. "I was wondering," Xzar said, his eyes unnaturally bright, "does it still count a a mercy kill if you hurt them in the first place?"

But it was Adam who cut the girl down, Aerie thought. Then she realised Xzar was talking about other deaths, other times and places. Imoen said he was a terrorist.

"No, it doesn't," Aerie said. This time she knew her hatred bled through to her words. She tried to do her duty as a healer, no matter what. "You need sleep. Go to bed." She grasped his shoulder again. "Adam, c-could you help?"

"Let me go," Xzar muttered, held between the two of them. He waved a hand vaguely at the room's walls. Aerie hoped he wasn't preparing a psi storm. "Why the esp-blocker? Don't like it. My head hurts."

"There's no esp-blocker. You'll feel better soon," Aerie said. The tone of voice was more important than the words, when a healer consoled incoherent people. "Be careful of the stitches."

"Don't like beds," the terrorist esper whined. His fingers twisted weakly in the blanket, fighting it. "Only real people have them. Didn't grow up with them. Wait—your back would be all wrong for that, even now. Anisodactylic feet? Do you have locking tendons on your calves? Either way, please let me go."

"Rest," Aerie repeated, ignoring his weak struggles. He'd be up soon enough.

"You don't fear catching his virus," Adam said, looking down at Aerie from his full height. "Gengineered to avoid vulnerability to common human ailments. But the avariel were a flawed attempt. Your hollow bones would easily snap. Your eyes aren't designed for artificial light. You wouldn't do well in a confined space. Your skin is soft, barely enhanced."

" _B-both_ of you," Aerie said, with as much force as she could muster, even though one of them was asleep, "need to stop commenting on my anatomy."

Adam let it stand as an exit line. She closed the door.

—

Aerie swiftly wrapped a changed bandage around the man's hand. The old bandages were soaking at her feet in a bucket of lye, for reuse. She moved on as quickly as she could, for the beds were already crowded. Aerie didn't want to think about what the hospital would be like in a real crisis, if the Empire should someday attack.

"For a Golgothite, you're not bad," Marya muttered, on her way to the next patient. She was a harsh woman, but her mind had a kind edge. "Keep it up and you just might survive here."

"T-thank you," Aerie whispered. There was a minor commotion, not far from them, and the two nurses looked up.

"You must see me at once!" a man's haughty voice demanded, in a rolling tenor as if he was used to being obeyed. His scarlet cloak and outfit stood out against the drab crowd around him. He was tall, lean, and tanned, with strikingly angled bones in his face. "Do you know what the consequences will be if you can't treat me?"

"Please sir Arrow! We have other patients," someone pleaded.

"My head aches, my skin burns, and my concentration's to pieces," he complained. "You'll give me a drug to fix this, now!"

"—Then again, sometimes we get to deal with this kind of patient," Marya complained, rolling her eyes. "Wing adepts think they're the sun and stars to the world," she said. Aerie read from her surface thoughts whom Fletcher Arrow was. A local celebrity, leader of one of the esper squads who flew in Mistport skies to defend the planet from invasion. She gazed at the man with the scarlet cloak whipping around him, fascinated. _He can fly._

"He's handsome, sure, but I wouldn't go for him without a set of earplugs and a gag," Marya said. She nudged Aerie, and Aerie blushed. She hadn't been thinking of anything like that. She promptly set herself back to work.

She thought: _I'm starting to find a place here._

She thought: _I even have friends._

—

When Aerie mounted the steps and opened the door to check on Adam and Xzar again, she found Owan had come back.

"—I promise you my aid. You will find no stronger fighter than a Hadenman," Adam offered.

"I'll believe that when I see you in action," Owan said.

"In return, you will take me to the coordinates of Lost Haden. That is all I ask," Adam said.

Owan shook her head. "Are you so sure it's in the family legacy? I don't know that I know it."

"As you grow more powerful, Child of Bhaal, you will gather the secrets of your line to yourself. It is your destiny." Adam's inhuman eyes glowed painfully green. "I know this like I know my own implants."

"Done. You fight with us, and I'll help you to Haden as best I can." Owan offered him a warrior's clasp of her hand. They armwrestled each other for a long moment, boosted strength against Hadenman inhumanity. Then they nodded to each other like two cats meeting on the street, and sat back.

Owan's mind bristled and bustled with plans for the future that involved sharp things, while Adam's was hard to read, alien and mixed with binary code.

"Aerie. Good to see you." Owan briefly inclined her head. "We're moving off this rock, and striking at the Empire from Unseeli. A victory there gives us the metal resources the Empire use in all their ships. They try to keep the planet a secret, but I've been around it as a mercenary before. Damned weird desert. There's no one who lives on Unseeli, and only one Base. They're not prepared for rebels to strike when no rebels live there, so we have our target."

"I w-wish you well." Aerie clasped her hands in front of her waist. "But I'm not going with you, not if it involves killing. My place is Mistport hospital."

"You will not fight, so you expect others to do it in your stead?" Adam rasped, a mixture of curiosity and cool contempt in his tone.

"I'm sworn not to kill. As an avariel, as my Uncle Quayle helped me ... I'll only help people by healing them. People like you fight to change the universe. But without people like me, there would never be p-peace afterward." She stammered at the end, and trailed off.

"Peace would be incredibly bloody boring," Owan said. "What about him?" She pointed to Xzar, asleep on the bed. Aerie went over to him.

"He w-would fight, at least I t-think so," Aerie said. "He was a rebel, after all." _By Imoen's word, a terrorist._ "But he's ill ..."

Xzar didn't wake up when she touched his shoulder. A cold sweat covered his sleeve. He was totally non-responsive. His face was completely covered in black, instead of his usual tattoo patterns, and when Aerie raised an eyelid his eye was rolled up. His pulse was low. Aerie tried to read his mind, to find out what he felt from the inside, but she couldn't pierce a black roiling cloud. His madness had always made his mind unreachable.

She straightened. "He n-needs more help," she said. Taking him to Mistport hospital would only make him worse. "It's p-probably just a Mistport virus, but you should take him to your ship."

Mistport was a rampantly free city. People minded their own business even when they saw a Hadenman with glowing green eyes carry what looked like a man's corpse over his shoulders.

 _The regeneration machine doesn't belong on one person's ship_ , Aerie thought. _It would be better if Owan donated it to Mistport hospital. It could save so many people._

But it was more likely that someone would steal such a rich prize as a regen machine, or that the hospital's management would reserve it only for those who could pay dearly.

Ourawang's ship was quiet. Aerie saw something that looked disturbingly like human remains, somewhere at the edge of the ship's protective field. The walls and floors inside were perfectly clean, gleaming and very different from Mistport buildings.

Aerie fed a blood sample to the machine, looking at it for diagnosis first. Xzar had violently objected to using the regeneration machine before, and although he was crazy, she'd respect his wishes as much as possible. Aerie looked over the readings and started another series of tests. She'd never had the chance to even get near a machine like this before, and maybe she was using it incorrectly. She tried again, several times.

 _No identification. The machine doesn't know._

She asked the regeneration machine to do its best with Xzar anyway, which was basically just removing the stitches and bathing him. She decided to leave him on the ship and give the AI instructions to tend to him.

It had to be a Mistport illness. She'd ask her colleagues at the hospital. She'd much rather be back there than here.

—


	19. Attack: Ourawang

She was trying to convince the legendary Keldorn Firecam to have a damn drink. The Copper Corona was a fighter's bar, full of mercenaries and bodyguards and bounty hunters looking out for their next scalp. Owan had spent the day chasing old mercenary contacts, mostly with indifferent results, and left Keldorn in his room. She didn't think he had done anything other than sit on the bed until she brought him downstairs.

"Try the red beer. The ginger in it'll stick hairs on your chest." Owan took a long cold draught. Good fire to it, as if they'd added a spice lizard or two for extra body.

"Then why are you drinking it?" Keldorn Firecam pushed the weak tea back across the bar. "Try to boil the water properly this time. I'll get the runs."

"What's your poison?" Owan felt fairly cheerful, and her credit could stregth a lot further than a few drinks. "Red? White? Dark? Pick your taste. Don't tell me Virimonde amber isn't good enough for you." The bottle was ridiculously expensive—but for now she could afford it.

"When I was young it was nothing but the finest vintages." Keldorn half-smiled. "Then, as times worsened and we went into hiding from the Empire, anything would do. Nowadays, the amount of hits I've taken to the kidneys ruin everything. I can't even take light beer."

"You're old," Owan said. "Guess I'll have to have your share."

The bartender shoved the redone tea at Keldorn. He tasted it, sighed, and toyed with his hip flask instead. "You recruited a Hadenman," he said quietly, to Owan. "I'm told I fought alongside the odd Hadenman as a rebel, but I don't remember. Empire mind techs, I suppose."

Owan raised a hand for another beer. "You're not the only one who's seen what the Imps can do," she said. She thought of water, and tried to quash it with alcohol.

Her comlink showed her Aerie calling. The girl endured the same prison as Owan and Imoen, and to think of losing her when she was a super-esper! Just give Owan time to work on a recruitment strategy, that was all. And give Imoen a chance to find her way back, too.

An urgent spoken message.

"Owan. C-come meet me at your ship. I have to show you something."

Aerie sat over a pile of loose datapads and even rough paper, scribbled all over with charts and notes. She could've done what she was doing much better and faster with Turandot's resources, but for once Owan's lousy AI hadn't given in.

"I s-started tracking what Xzar has," she said. "Raised temperature, lowered pulse rate, cold sweats, and delirium followed by prolonged unconsciousness. Though with him it's hard to tell about the d-delirium.

"The Mistport records didn't have anything identical, n-not exactly. But I started reviewing recent fever cases as they came in. In some of them, the symptoms were the same. And the n-number ... it's growing. Look at this." She traced an exponential curve. "And t-that's just the ones who report it to the hospital."

"So it's catching," Owan muttered, and took a hasty step back from the body on one of her beds. The mad esper looked none too attractive lying there, all limp and deathlike with a black mask spread over all his face.

"Yes. It's highly c-contagious. It's probably airborne. Filter masks are becoming expensive. But d-dont worry ... some people just don't catch it." Aerie looked up, her eyes red and bags under her eyes purple from exhaustion. "The incubation period is about two days. If you were vulnerable, you'd have got it by now. Some of my friends from the hospital have it ..."

Ourawang didn't have to say aloud, _What if it's an Empire gengineered plague?_

And if that was the case, there would be an attack soon. She'd stand and fight instead of run away from torture.

"Just before we landed, there was a refugee ship," Aerie said. "It could be ... someone from there had the illness. It almost f-fits the time of the earliest cases. The m-maps of the city don't show a pattern ..."

Aerie had added red and yellow dots to sheets of graph paper. Thieves Quarter, Merchants Quarter, Guilds Quarter, and Tech Quarter were pretty evenly represented. "C-confirmed addresses and unconfirmed," Aerie said, "the biggest concentrations are in Guilds and Thieves, in Thieves a l-lot of people live in small houses. Age and gender are also evenly s-spread. Have a look at it by time ..."

People had come down with it in all four quarters not long after the refugee ship arrived, it seemed.

"It isn't fatal. At least n-not yet. Not in itself," Aerie said. "People _have_ died, but that was from falling in the wrong place. Some people froze to death, and others were robbed and killed. Or s-sold to cloneleggers. But since movement is shut down, people can live from their reserves for some time, and they still have a swallowing reflex."

Owan pursed her lips. "Doesn't make sense. Why would the Empire make a non-fatal plague?"

"I d-don't think we _want_ to know," Aerie said. "How to inoculate for it, and how to fix it. That's all we need."

"The Empire's going to attack Mistworld. What's Mistport doing to prepare?" Owan snapped. "Turandot!"

"What is it, boss?" Turandot yawned inside Owan's head. "Throw the chicken-headed esper chit out the airlock? Poison the guy esper? Bring back the contortionist midget? Please go with the last option, I need an oil change ..."

"Get me Phylida. Head of starport security," Owan ordered. "She's one of Imoen's friends. Don't take no for answer."

"Sorry," the woman on the screen recited, "Phylida's indisposed. I'm her deputy. No traces of Empire ships in Mistworld space. We make damn sure of that. If you'll excuse me, I have a million other things to do."'

"My sister Imoen's an old friend of Phylida's. Do you know where she is now?"

The deputy stared, and laughed in Owan's face. "You mean _that_ one? The thief who stole Phylida's priceless statuette of Lady Silvershield? Damned if I know. Phyl wanted a bounty on her head for that stunt."

The call disconnected. _Dammit, Imoen!_ She could be lying unconscious or worse in an alley somewhere, even as they spoke. "I'll send Keldorn to find her. And get Montaron, if he spots him," Owan planned. "Adam should help the Mistworld council hunt down the refugees. I take it they _are_ looking for the plague source?" She whirled on Aerie.

"It w-wouldn't ... wouldn't do much good now. Everyone who has it is contagious. I have to do what I can in the hospital," Aerie said. "I have to go. The AI can easily do what needs to be done to Xzar."

—

 _I'm too old for this._ Keldorn clutched Owan's furs across his shoulders. The cold always got him, deep in his bones. Too old, too tired, too broken by the Empire. He should go back to his esper children and ask to die there. They needed him, needed someone, and he cared for them more than many would.

He wasn't old, not in an Empire where aristocrats could see a hundred and fifty if they weren't assassinated or executed, but he looked eighty and felt double that.

Imoen Winthrop. The surname vaguely rung a bell, but he'd been in so many battles and then the Empire mind techs stirred sticky fingers through his brain. He couldn't be sure himself what he knew was true. Most of what he thought he remembered probably came from distorted legends. Maybe he'd fought beside Winthrop, and if so he betrayed him.

Imoen was stepsister to Ourawang, child of Lord Bhaal and his legacy. He'd seen Owan's strength. She seemed very young, to him, though she must have been older than his own daughters. He'd left his family for their own safety, a long time ago. Owan struck him as a brash, imprudent mercenary, seeking to tear down the Empire in repayment for Outlawing her.

He'd seen many a young rebel firebrand who set out to change the universe, and he'd been one himself, but nothing ever changed. He reached for the flask in his belt and took a quick pull.

Keldorn stepped into the Hob Hound's Head, trailing frost and snow from the end of his coat, and ordered a beer he couldn't drink from the green-skinned bartender. Imoen Winthrop had quite a local career. She'd won a drinking contest here two days ago and got away with the bartender's wallet. Sentiment ran fierce against her.

"You sick, old man?" the bartender demanded. Keldorn shook his head, keeping his fair distance. News had started to spread through the streets about a plague that made people go to sleep, waking optional.

"There's money in the girl. Could I help your memory out?" Keldorn pushed a small, weighty bag across; Ourawang's funds.

The bartender scooped it up, flexing his broad layers of gengineered muscles as he did so. "Sure. She went over to the River Autumn and jumped on the next ferry. Hope whoever's after her wants her head detached from her body."

Keldorn grunted at the meagre tip, and turned away. Then the mercenary at the door made his move, cramming himself against the frame and taking on a threatening pose.

"There's a fee for leaving," he said. "Guess what it costs."

"I'm just an old man," Keldorn said. The mercenary laughed at the joke.

Then the robber looked down and saw the disrupter pointing at his stomach. It was courtesy of Ourawang, and it was fully charged.

" ... sure, sure, whatever you want, I'm backing off." The mercenary raised his hands and flicked Keldorn a conciliatory grin. Behind his face were the words _You wouldn't dare_ , and behind that was the knowledge that Keldorn had all but declared himself an Empire spy.

For very few other than the Empire would issue energy weapons.

Keldorn slipped behind the door, sheathed the weapon, and went as quickly as he could. He panted when he neared the ferry, and uncapped his hip flask with trembling hands.

They'd eventually try to roll him for the money and the disrupter, but he'd plenty of practice in staying out of sight. He'd figured out where Imoen Winthrop would have to turn up. Guilds Quarter, at the black edges. Gellana Mirrorshade, Mistport's best alchemist. The woman was on _something_ , and Gellana was the best of the best.

Gellana's customers filtered through slowly, men and women in respectable coats and hooded cloaks. Keldorn stayed on his stakeout, sitting in the cold alley like a beggar with nothing better to do. He basically was a beggar with nothing better to do. A little girl passing by gave him a copper coin, before her family quickly pulled her away.

In the dead of night, Keldorn saw the rooftop window open, and the tall, lithe woman pass swiftly through.

She'd an easy choice of which escape route to choose, and it wasn't possible to see the beggar in the shadows. He stood up suddenly as she passed.

"Imoen! Your sister sent me."

"What the hell? Who're you?" She flicked on a cigar lighter in the darkness. It glinted with encrusted and rather tasteless gemstones.

"That's not important. Owan sent me. She's worried about you," Keldorn said.

"Tell that to the Imperial Marines. I don't need a babysitter. How'd you find me, anyway?" Imoen Winthrop's eyes glittered with stimulants and avarice. Snow lined the edges of her pink-dyed hair and her sleek black furs.

"You've been running around the city compulsively stealing from everyone and their dogs. You couldn't do half of what you've been doing without a little chemical help, and everyone knows Gellana's the best," Keldorn said.

"Screw you. You're probably just a bounty hunter." Imoen Winthrop let her weight slip backward, then she pivoted forward and shoved Keldorn back. "Not a real good one. Just some ol' bag-o'bones."

Keldorn picked himself up, slowly. "She said, if you doubted me, I should tell you to remember when she pulled you away from that Erymanthian cyborg boar up a mulberry tree," he said. Imoen shook her head.

"Damn you! I don't care, I won't be locked up. Not even by her." The drugs she'd taken made her twitch. She held her lighter closer to Keldorn's face. "Ya look familiar. Who the hell are you anyway?"

"No one of any importance." Keldorn stepped away from the light. "What's important is your sister. Go back to her."

"I know your face." Imoen grabbed his shoulders, turning him roughly around. "Old, real old. But I'm good with faces. Angles, feature ratios, they don't change, and I got ten thousand wanted posters up in my head. Hell. You're him. Keldorn Fucking Firecam. I _hate_ you!"

Her voice was frighteningly loud. Maybe she'd tell the whole town who he was. And maybe then the Empire would send bounty hunters after him, to kill him at last.

Imoen's eyes now flashed with tears in the light. "Ya got my da killed! Everyone said it was worth it, you know. He saved the great Keldorn Firecam! Hell no, it wasn't."

He'd gotten a lot of people killed. "I'm sorry. And it wasn't worth it."

"Don't even remember him, do you?" Imoen sniffed. "Gorion. His name was Gorion. He was a polter esper, who fought for you on Cold Rock. Ring any bells?"

"Yes." Keldorn's ribcage rattled inside him. "Cold Rock. I ran in a ship, but the Empire captured me afterwards."

The mind techs got their hands on him, and they finished him. He didn't even break himself out. It was a few of the friends he still had left, who took him to avoid the Empire putting him on a show trial. He did nothing after that.

"I thought so," Imoen sneered. "There were rumours about you, still rebelling against the Empire, but none of them came to anything much. I figured you treated what Gorion did for you like dirt, and got away with your head between your legs."

"It's all true," Keldorn said. "I betrayed everyone. I told the Empire everything. I'm no one now. But what's important is bringing you back to Owan ..."

Imoen lurched forward and pushed him again. This time, Keldorn held on to her arm.

"Forget it," she said, and wrenched herself free. "Bored now! There're better places to be, things to steal!"

Imoen Winthrop glared into the night. A bag of rubbish spontaneously lit on fire. She ran, leaping high and cleanly passing Mistport's twisted streets.

According to the tracking device Keldorn had placed on her sleeve, she was heading into Thieves Quarter. If he and Ourawang were lucky, they might be able to cut her off before she noticed.

—

Aerie saw the ward for the sleeping fever was more than filled. People were crammed in like sardines. It made some sense; dead to the world, they didn't need as much space as conscious patients. Fletcher Arrow the wing adept was sleeping there, and his entire squad had also come down with it.

"Guess the rumours about him are true," Marya joked, and nudged Aerie in the ribs.

"How c-can you be ... calm about this?" Aerie breathed softly, so as not to draw attention from others. "This is an Empire plague. They will attack."

"Seen it before, honey. Happens every season." Marya grunted as she bent over a catheter. "The Empire decides their grunts have been napping too long, and unleashes its latest bioweapon on us. Doctor Niemain Darkhold and his friends go to work, find a cure, and sell it at eye-gouging prices. Sometimes literally. It's not my first, and Mater Mundi preserve it won't be my last. This one isn't half as lethal as the others. Or even as infectious."

 _That's what puzzles me._ Aerie reached out with her mind, again, to a patient. He was unconscious and unreachable as Xzar. Neither dreams nor thoughts to catch hold of. She opened her eyes and looked over the patients. Fletcher Arrow and his scarlet-dyed leathers, the colour blending into a scarf from the woman next to him. A man with red gloves next to her. Her eyes focused on the room: dark drab colours, with plenty of flashes of scarlet between them ...

"Marya," Aerie said, "it's espers. The plague targets espers. We have to warn everyone!"

Marya looked confused. "Not everyone here's an esper. Mistport's infested with them, no offence. That one's no more an esper than I'm the Empress, that one's not either, no more her ..."

"What we call the esper gene isn't only one gene but a set of mutations and epigenetic factors working together, still barely understood by science, which is why Empire genetests d-don't perfectly catch espers through prenatal testing," Aerie recited quickly. "Some people only p-partly have esper genes, which means that their offspring may become espers. Some have the genes but don't manifest it, or only manifest esp later in life." _Like Imoen._ "Therefore, t-targeting espers based on their genetic profile will result in false positives and a small number of false negatives. Look at the significance here—this s-sample size is sufficient to draw a correlation. I've been s-so blind! Look at what's happened!" Aerie scribbled down her notes.

 _Imoen_ , she remembered, _punching Xzar with her fist in pyrokinetic flames._

"One more thing, Marya. Tell me—how did the refugee ship get here? We arrived just after it."

Marya stared at her, shaking her head. "It was doing a cargo and passenger run in Tannim space, as close to Mistworld as anyone gets. The Empire fired on them for smuggling, and declared everyone on board Outlawed. Typical Empire overreaction. They had no choice but to come here. Except one of them was probably the plague vector. So it was a setup ..."

 _It was, but it was a distraction_ , Aerie thought. _Owan needs to find her sister, more than ever._

"Give t-this to the doctor," Aerie said. She pressed the datapad into Marya's hand. "I'm sorry. I have to go find another esper."

 _Someone who already let me inside his mind, even if it was only a small piece of it. Someone who tried to signal what was wrong, with a black terrible miasma covering his face._

Marya called after her, but she was already at the door.

"Owan," she begged, "find Imoen. The Empire will attack, and I almost know how." The message fell on static silence, through the cracks of Mistport's out-of-date and crumbling comms system. As soon as Ourawang reached a high area, she'd get it.

Aerie sat beside Xzar. His black face hadn't changed. But this time, she'd go deeper.

She touched his forehead, and descended into his mind.

—

Owan waited. The signal pointed the way. Imoen passed by, and she stepped out of the shadows to her sister.

"Owan." Imoen's mouth moved upward; it wasn't a smile. Her eyes danced with some drug she'd taken, wild and uncanny. "Real funny seeing you here. Real funny."

She raised the arm with the transponder on it, and ripped away her coat sleeve.

"Im, I don't know what's wrong with you," Owan said. It was entirely the wrong thing to say, and she knew it. "There's an esper plague. The terrorist guy's taken it already, and you're a pyro now. Come back to the ship and we'll keep you in quarantine until they find a vaccine. I don't want you hurt."

Imoen's mouth was a thin, cold line. "You want to lock me up. No one's gonna lock me up no more."

They both had the same memories. Knives, cages, and a man who broke them into nothing. "I know," Owan said, more gently this time. "I was there with you, sis. You rescued me."

Imoen raised her chin. "Yeah, I was there. Don't talk down to me."

"I want you to come back. I need you," Owan said.

"Shut up," Imoen said.

"We swore we'd be sisters, that day in the tree. The blood of the covenant is stronger than the water of the womb. I have other siblings, but they've all tried to kill me," Owan said. "I trust you, Im, and I don't trust many people."

Keldorn stumbled up behind Imoen, slower on his feet than Owan. "Sisters," he panted. "I had two daughters, once. Leona and Vesper. I left them and my wife behind, because I wanted to protect them. I don't know whether it saved them or not. But when Vesper was teased, Leona stepped in to protect her. And when Leona was lonely, she had her younger sister to make her laugh. It's the most important thing in the world, to have someone who'll always be at your back."

Imoen rolled her eyes. "No one ever told me that the worst thing about Keldorn Firecam was how _boring_ he was." She looked behind herself, where Keldorn was waiting; before herself, where Owan cut her off. There were only two ways out of the narrow alleyway, and Owan and Keldorn had neatly surrounded her.

"You need to see some sense, Im." Ourawang stepped forward, her right hand raised. "Think about it. The torturer messed with our heads ..."

" _No one's gonna lock me up again!_ " Imoen screamed. And as she cried out, she released her fire.

Ourawang became a column of flame. Keldorn smelt her burning flesh. The Empire burnt people alive too. He'd seen others, and he remembered.

The immolation only lasted a second or two. Ourawang's body dropped to the ground, blackened, smoking. _She's dead_ , Keldorn thought, _no one could have survived that_ , and then he saw a faint twitch. He was amazed at the Bhaalchild.

Then Imoen looked at Keldorn, who was also standing in her way. Fire and murder flared in her eyes. He had nowhere to run.

Imoen's eyes rolled white in her head, and she fell flat on the cobblestones beside her sister.

 _You looked after us, so we've been looking after you_ , said a voice in his head. _But we won't be able to do it for much longer._

Dili. The child projected her image inside his brain. Dili was one of Abraxus' abandoned children, cast out to the street when her birth family decided she was too inconvenient to keep. Her flesh rippled and changed of its own accord, and she was a powerful esper. She was eight.

 _The herald of the black spider's done her work, and it's nearly here_ , Dili said. _We can't help you, Keldorn._

The mental connection dropped out. Keldorn fell to his knees beside Ourawang's charred body. She might as well be a corpse, and she would be one soon. Beside her, Imoen lay equally still on the ground.

—

A/N: "It'll stick hairs on your chest"/"Then why are you drinking it?" - Simon R. Green, Hawk and Fisher ('Beyond the Blue Moon').


	20. Invasion: Aerie

Adam shook Aerie by the shoulder like a terrier would a rat. She'd fainted over the male esper, lying with her face pressed closely to his.

"The child of Bhaal was attacked. By the woman she calls sister. You will watch over the regeneration machine. If she perishes, my last hope of lost Haden is gone, and with it will be your life."

Aerie coughed, and brushed tangles of hair out of her eyes. She'd travelled far enough into the chaotic miasma to see the truth. "Xzar s-showed me," she babbled, "well, he tried. The plague is a network. A m-mass mind, stronger than the sum of its parts. The infected espers are bound together, giving their power to a m-monster.

"It's attacking Mistworld, it's here!"

Adam shook her again. "So we've noticed," he said. Discordant, conflicting signals filtered through the ship's system—people yelling over each other, bursts of weapons, screams. He pushed Aerie at the regeneration machine's controls. "She was immolated. Keldorn summoned me, and I carried her back myself. Cure her."

Aerie stumbled over the controls, and risked a glance at Imoen. She was also unconscious, with Keldorn standing over her.

"K-keep Imoen sedated!" Aerie snapped. "Or else!"

The damage readings were terrible. Aerie had seen similar before; the other patients had all died. But something in Ourawang wouldn't let her quit, and the regeneration machine held powerful technology.

The ship was racked by noise. The Empire was attacking the starport.

"AI, take us into space," Adam ordered.

The AI made a raspberry sound effect. "I don't take orders from tin cans."

Adam reached for a wall panel, and ripped it off despite Turandot's outraged yell. A green wire shot from inside his wrist and bonded with the ship. The AI's voice abruptly cut off with a squawk, and the _Knucklebones_ began to move.

 _Owan might just live through this, if the ship isn't blown to pieces_ , Aerie thought. The regeneration machine continued its work. The comm feed pieced parts of the situation together—Empire gravity barges heading Mistport's way, Empire crafts bombing the starport, an Empire starcruiser lurking cloaked in deep space. Turandot rattled off the times for them: the starcruiser had to have the new stardrive installed, the incredibly fast one. Much better than her own ship.

Adam was a Hadenman, more machine than man. The _Knuckebones_ obeyed his will.

He took a cautious approach. He swept behind an Imperial starfighter beating a Mistworld smuggler in a dogfight, then destroyed it before the pilot noticed. Another man was dead. Adam swept aside from the battle, and flung the _Knucklebones_ to the other side of the planet.

"K-keldorn," Aerie called, nervous. "L-lord Firecam?" He was the legendary Keldorn Firecam. He'd fought on hundreds of worlds for the rebellion, and he'd really done most of what people said he'd done. A hero. As she read his mind, she could feel his sorrow. "Please. I need you to look after the machine."

 _As if I'm good for anything any more_ , she heard his thought. But he moved slowly to the regeneration machine.

"What are you doing?" Adam spat at her. "Save the child of Bhaal!" She couldn't read the stream of binary code in his brain that spat angrily at her. But he couldn't seem to move far from where he controlled the ship, and Aerie stepped away from him.

"I am saving Owan," Aerie said. She knelt beside Imoen. Then she closed her eyes, and journeyed inside Imoen's mind.

—

Imoen was unconscious, and she had to remain so. Aerie went below, deeper, searching for the undermind, the hidden subconscious. She slowed her breathing to mirror Imoen's. As she descended, she wasn't aware of her body any more; only her mind, and the gate to Imoen's undermind.

Her mind's eye saw a locked and chained door, set in darkness. She wasn't surprised. She waited, and from the darkness another shape slowly formed.

It didn't look like Imoen. A small woman with short pink hair, heavily armed, baring her teeth. They'd been filed down to sharp points.

Aerie waited for the image to identify herself. Instead, she split off into a chorus of herself. Six identical figures, surrounding Aerie.

"I'm Alora One," said the first. "Alora Two, Three, Four, Five, Six. Mess our names up and we'll cut you, bitch."

They were clones. Or, more probably, had been clones.

"Imoen got us all killed," Alora Two said. "She was stupid, so we died."

"I'm sorry," Aerie said. Sometimes it was all that you could say.

"So you should be," Alora Three—or was it Four?—teased. The group of six moved around each other, changing like a dream. "That's not very nice of you, coming down to taunt us for being dead. None of us like mean people."

"I'm looking for a nice person," Aerie said. Her mental voice didn't stutter. "I need to find someone clever and quick. Someone who can find their way past any number of deadly traps."

"Traps and tricks is it?" Alora Five said. "Tricks and traps? Riddle us this: I am bright over water but a shadow on the land. I lift myself when I travel, and it's best to have one of us in the hand."

"Answer us!" Alora Six said, and heedlessly emptied a flamethrower into the air. She was a mental image: but espers knew that even dreams could kill.

"It's a bird," Aerie said, and tried to stop herself from feeling hurt. "A bird over water and land."

And although she didn't consciously wish it, her white wings grew out from the scars on her back. As they did only in dreams.

"Those are pretty," Alora Two said, wide-eyed. "Maybe," she said slowly, "you're nice after all!"

"I need you to find someone for me," Aerie repeated. "Someone who's saved people, any number of people. Someone who's already a hero, famous in the underground. Someone who can break into the Empress' own systems and send a message for equality. I need someone gifted and cunning and strong."

The group of Aloras let her walk to the door, which was still locked and chained. Aerie didn't know how to pick them.

"Cunning makes people _dead_ ," Alora said, and the word rang with all the bitterness in the world.

Aerie didn't know what had happened. She could guess the outline of it and sense Imoen's emotions, nothing more. Dead friends. People who were willing to give up their lives for others, like Keldorn Firecam and Imoen. Like Uncle Quayle.

 _I should be dead_ , Aerie thought, and the darkness around her lapped at her feet. There was a sullen glow, as if dormant flames would spring up in anger at any moment.

"You died becaue you were Imoen's friends, and you chose to follow her," Aerie said quickly. "But that's what everyone who joins the rebellion does. We know the risks, and we think they're worth taking. For the sake of the people we love."

The Aloras clasped each other's hands, remembering at last that they were friends. The clones melted and merged into each other, a blur of pink and white, and then Imoen stood at the door.

"I want this to be equal," Imoen said, and stuck out a hand. "You break into my mind, only if I break into your secrets. Deal?"

Something frightened Aerie, frightened her more than anything else. But she had to do this, to save her friends. She held Imoen's hand.

The lock on the door dissolved.

Aerie flew with Imoen, carrying her, holding her hand. They crossed a vast cavern, split in two. The left-hand side was lit with strange colours impossible to describe. The right was dark, only marked with grey ashes and faint flame.

Imoen's hand was cool in Aerie's. "I did terrible things, didn't I?" Imoen said. "The Empire made me."

 _Someone who isn't an esper put blocks inside your mind, ugly things, crude_ , Aerie remembered Xzar lecturing her. She wanted to take it as assurance. She needed to unravel the barriers.

"This way," Aerie said. They swooped left. A cold cruel wall of stone rose before them.

Jon Irenicus took Aerie and Imoen and cut them apart, and his mind tech went deep into their minds. A part of Aerie's own brain was against her. She was overwhelmed with memories of knives, and cold gloved hands touching her. And she knew the thing he'd kept from her was worse.

The block took the shape of a physical wall, cold chilled steel. Everything was cold. Aerie's wings faltered, and she and Imoen fell to the bottom of that cage.

The cold words echoed around them. " _When I am met, I'm everything. When I'm gone, I'm remembered in nightmares. Only the wise flee me as they ought._ "

"I don't know!" Aerie screamed, and tried to bury her face in her hands. But Imoen was there with her. She gripped Aerie steadily, and the fire in her kept them warm.

"Pain," Imoen said. She bared her teeth. "We feel pain. It doesn't go away. It ends up in our nightmares. Say it!"

"Pain," Aerie whispered, and she was once more in that room below all Irenicus' other torture devices.

The white room looked empty, at first, and then you saw the strange light. Colours and lights flashed along a metallic frame, the shape nothing anyone could find words for. It dove into planes nobody could see. The lights fled into Aerie's head, and Irenicus opened her brain to force them in.

The alien stardrive was overwhelming. Her esper's senses saw it inside and out, and showed her the people who built it and why. They were shapeshifters, from a planet where life constantly seethed and roiled and altered itself. But then they heard warning of something coming, something terrible. Something so awful it could not be pictured, let alone fought. As flies to wanton boys, worlds were to the Terror.

The living technology unrolled before Aerie. With a mind that reached into others', she had the ability to map something so alien. The stardrive was far heavier than the sum of its parts, since the energies it summoned belonged to other dimensions. It passed between space and time because it was unbound from normal existence. Irenicus used her to understand the alien stardrive, and then blocked it from her conscious mind.

She was free from that now, because of her friend. "Imoen," Aerie said, "come over here." They flew to Imoen's blocks.

These were black stone, charred by neverending bursts of fire. The smell of smoke filled Aerie's nostrils until she couldn't breathe. Imoen shook her head.

"Can we go back? I'm just not feelin' it today. Maybe later ..."

"You're needed," Aerie told her friend. "By the Mistworld rebels. By ..."

"By everyone I betrayed," Imoen said, and the charred black walls grew close enough to crush them. Aerie closed her eyes.

"I am weightless, but I weigh people down to drown in me," Imoen said. "Those who cannot know me are worst off of all." She screamed bitterly. Aerie thought through the riddle, as the walls closed in on them.

"Guilt," Aerie said, and a small silver key appeared in her hand. "The riddle is guilt. Let's unlock the doors."

"I betrayed everyone who trusted me in the rebellion, and Sarevok the Widowmaker went out and killed them all," Imoen said.

She and Aerie and Owan walked through the remains of the rebel underground once more. The sewers were blackened and bloodied by a terrible battle, not long ago.

"He made me talk. He pumped me full of drugs. And I guess he gave me a virus, too."

"He made you a Typhoid Mary," Aerie said, "a plague-carrier. You went through Mistport. And every esper you met caught it from you."

"I didn't know," Imoen said. "The black network's all my fault. The ones I infected gave it to others, and almost all the espers in Mistport fell into it."

"Do you know what it is?" Aerie asked. Below Mistport's seams, espers were linked one to the other, a forced gestalt that gathered their power for the Empire's use. She knew what it did, but she did not yet understand its nature.

"I'm contagious," Imoen said. "But I'm not one with it. So I'm pretty useless."

They walked past Owan, lying with black burnt skin in a Mistport alleyway.

"I set her on fire," Imoen said. "I wanted to kill her. She was asking questions. She's dead, isn't she? My sister's dead!" She screamed, and the walls of her mind shook around them. Imoen spiralled into a grieving madness.

Aerie, surprised at herself, slapped Imoen across the face. "Your sister's alive and she needs you," she said, "so come out of here already."

—

Owan walked out of the regeneration machine as Imoen and Aerie woke up. She went to her sister and briefly tightened her arms around Imoen's shoulders. Adam told her what had happened.

Imoen and Aerie had only been away a few minutes, but much could happen in that time, and none of it good. The Empire sent gravity barges down to Mistworld. They bombed large swathes of Mistport, including the starport. They'd destroyed most of the few fighting ships. The mothership, the Imperial starcruiser, wasn't even visible to any sensors. Adam struggled to keep the Knucklebones alive.

"It's all my fault." Imoen was sprawled miserably on the ground. She brought her knees up to her chest and buried her face in them. "I'm sorry. I'm so sorry."

"Blame the damned Empire, and blame it afterwards," Owan said. "Aerie! What the hell happened to Mistworld's espers? Their psionic shield's down!"

"They're c-cloaking the Imperial starcruiser," Aerie said. "The plague bound their minds together, and used their powers to protect the Empire ship. So Xzar knows where it is." They both stared at the unconscious esper.

"Can you take down their shield? Free the espers?" Owan demanded.

"No. I d-don't have the power." Aerie stepped behind Imoen, trying to gather strength. Imoen was a hero of the underground, a famous cyberrat who led daring raids on the Empire; Aerie was only a weak telepath. The Mater Mundi touched her mind once, but that was all over now. Yet there was something ...

"I think I remember how to t-teleport. The Mater Mundi showed me. I could use Xzar's mind for the location. But ..."

"Do it," Owan said, and drew her sword. "Teleport Adam and me as near's you can get to the ship command centre. Turandot!" she ordered. "Take over the ship. Keldorn—I want you to keep my sister safe."

Aerie could tell she didn't expect to come back. "I w-won't let you kill yourself," she said. "Imoen—Owan n-needs help ..."

"And _I_ won't allow the Child of Bhaal to kill herself either," Adam said. "The plan is suicide."

"If Mistworld dies, with it goes the last rebel planet," Owan said. "Teleport me there, Aerie, and I'll kill as many high-ups as I can. With luck, I'll take down their esper shield. Without luck, I'll delay them for a while. It's what has to be done, and there's no point fretting about it."

 _She's a hero_ , Aerie thought, and was silent. Imoen wrung her hands. No, not her hands: her sleeves. A wide variety of objects tumbled out, only about half of which Aerie recognised.

"I went thieving 'round the city. I was s'posed to wander and spread the virus," Imoen said miserably. "At least, maybe—maybe something I stole can help. This—that—a Mistport Councillor's pin isn't gonna do much good—take the force shield bracelet, Owan—this one."

Imoen held up a data crystal, and suddenly a death's head grin bloomed on her sharp face. "Lover Boy. Guaranteed virus, screw your systems 'til they die. Introduce _that_ as the starcruiser's new best friend."

"It's p-perfect," Aerie said. "A solution without b-bloodshed. Without a starcruiser, they'll surrender. I volunteer—I can be psionically invisible—tell me what to do."

"Get in, shove this in the nearest data port you see, get out," Imoen said. She pressed the crystal into Aerie's hand, bending her fingers over it. "Ya sure?"

 _Owan was sure. I'm not. I'm scared. But I've killed, and I deserve to die anyway._

Aerie nodded. "I'm ready," she said. She went to Xzar and placed a hand over his forehead. She needed him, one last time.

 _Tell me where you and the black network are shielding, Xzar._

And then a rush of empty air filled where the avariel had stood. Aerie was gone. Imoen blinked.

"Boys and girls, in the escape pod now," Ourawang ordered. "Turandot, set the Knucklebones to ramming speed."

—


	21. War: Ourawang

Owan opened the Knucklebones' sensors. The starcruiser was invisible, but its children weren't. The dogfights kept on, and she and Turandot could guess roughly that the starcruiser lay in the empty space nearby.

"You're not planning to be in the yacht when you ram it," Adam said. He was the last on her bridge. She'd had to shove Keldorn and Imoen on their way.

"Hell, no. I'll guide her until the last, then join you. Don't wait up." Adam'd done a fair job of piloting her ship, she had to admit—the Knucklebones had hardly a scratch, mostly from avoiding the battle—but nobody knew the yacht like she did. The Hadenman didn't budge. "What are you waiting for?"

"Everything," he said. His green inhuman stare would've put off most people, but Owan didn't have the time for it.

 _Ram the starcruiser soon's the shield goes down_ , she ordered Turandot. _Like hell I give them a chance to live._

They flew past an Imperial starfighter. Standard issue, smaller than the Knucklebones, fast and well armed. But Ourawang made a point of buying the best. She held her ship's shield and moved through the pilot's blows, then she opened up with a sonic blast. Temporary disrupter of systems, constant deafness to pilots. His speed dropped and she shot the ship out of the sky.

The Imperial ships had the numbers, and they were turning the tables on Mistworld's scattered resistance. Owan saw a smuggler's ship, too far away for her to help, fired on in all directions. The captain must've known he had no way out. He drew about to deliberately ram one of the Imperial ships, and both were destroyed in an instant.

That left plenty more Imperial ships to mop away the remains. Three starfighters came at Ourawang, tight Academy formation. Owan sped toward the centre man, daring him to play chicken. He slipped under her. She opened fire in both directions at the other two, rolled aside, and scored a direct hit with her disrupter cannon. The ship exploded into debris.

The joy of battle ran through her blood. She dropped her shields—need them for later—and opened fire on another Imperial ship. Disrupter cannon almost hit her, and she laughed at the near misses.

 _Don't let me down, Aerie_ , she thought.

—

Aerie materialised in a corridor in the Imperial starcruiser, and felt the presence around her.

She was terrifyingly close to the black network. The mass mind was in a part of the ship no one went near without orders. A thousand voices, whispering and falling over each other. A gestalt, that fed on the pain and horror of all its victims.

Aerie's psionic invisibility kept her hidden from humans, but the mass mind was everywhere at once. She couldn't help but read it.

 _Fear. Pain. Cruelty. On all these I feed. I am legion, I contain multitudes. I hear their whispers. I thrive on their suffering. No portal bars me, no door may block my way. For I am Lloth._

The espers were inside her. Aerie heard their voices, their screams. Their bodies were locked in darkness while their minds and powers were Lloth's whim. With each new voice of pain and hatred Lloth's malevolence grew, and the mass mind did the Empire's bidding.

 _More succumb each passing moment. The plague cannot be halted. A banquet opens, the screams continue. I feed on Mistworld, and grow stronger._

The mass mind felt an intruder. It took time for its awareness to grow. Aerie trembled, too weak to move. The data crystal's edges cut into her hand.

She remembered why she was there. To save her friends without shedding blood.

She wondered about Lloth's origins. There was an echo of a torturer, a cold man who made monstrous experiments to do his will. She could feel his touch, bending, shaping. A formless black mass filled her mind, a field of sharp needles plunging into it.

 _I'll never kill again_ , she thought. She told the truth and made it the truth, shaping it deep as the marrow in her bones. _I want to help. I will heal you if I can. I'm a healer._

And at this strangeness Lloth hesitated, for she knew nothing of healing. Nothing and no one had ever approached her like this. No doubt the hesitation would never last, but in that moment Aerie slipped to her knees and placed the data crystal in an outlet.

 _Imoen!_ Aerie reached out and touched her friend's mind, ringing bright and brave in space. The link was still there, and it was enough for her to teleport as the Mater Mundi once taught her.

She was gone before Lloth understood that the systems were breaking down, all over the ship.

—

Aerie landed next to Imoen. They weren't on the Knucklebones' bridge any more; she was in the middle of crash webbing. She nodded to show she'd done it. Her friends stared at her as if they'd just seen a miracle, and she felt herself blush. Imoen, Keldorn, Adam, Xzar. Where was Owan? Alive; there was no sorrow around her. She felt the ship roll and shake.

Xzar stood. His face was clear of the black markings at last. "Oh, well _done_ ," he breathed, and then his arms were around her as he bent down to meet her height. His long green sleeves covered her face, flapping around her eyes. But that was wrong—Aerie couldn't imagine Xzar voluntarily touching anyone. She felt Lloth laughing behind his eyes, and then Xzar's long knife was at her throat. He didn't hesitate.

Aerie cut through his mind with a swift surgical stroke. Xzar fell at her feet. A thin line of liquid flowed down her neck.

Imoen stared, and then she saw the energy wings gather around the woman. Aerie wasn't looking out of her own eyes any more. Imoen saw the angel again, the inhuman warrior with scarlet eyes. The closest thing to God she was ever likely to meet in life. The Mater Mundi.

The Mater Mundi raised her head, and the shallow cut on her throat healed itself.

 _I have need of you elsewhere_ , she announced. Imoen's world blurred and disappeared before her eyes.

—

Owan wasn't _that_ surprised when the manifestation of God materialised on her bridge. She'd just seen Imoen's virus take effect, and watched the vast starcruiser peel into sight. The size of a medium moon, bristling with vast disrupter cannon and all kinds of weapons, and dead in space. Owan's plan was to set her force shields to maximum, then ram the Knucklebones into the starcruiser's weaponry.

"That will destroy the vessel and all upon it," the Mater Mundi said, and an inhuman smile grew on her face.

She snapped her fingers, and Ourawang was standing in the escape pod, separated from her ship. The Mater Mundi reached out with her mind and sent the Knucklebones hurtling to its destination. Owan was left staring. The Mater Mundi teleported Owan down to the planet, where the battle for Mistport still raged.

—

Imoen saw the starcruiser explode in the sky. You couldn't miss it. Lover Boy worked on anything. Bring down the shields from the inside, ram it before it'd a chance to recover. She yelled a battlecry, since she and Adam had found themselves on Mistport's barricades. A troop of Empire marines were almost on them.

Imoen reached out with her mind and brought down a wall of flame. Adam drew his sword and cut through the burned men. She kept behind the Hadenman, letting him take point. He cleared a path through Mistport's alleyways, screaming Ourawang's name, and Imoen set things on fire whenever she saw a good chance. The underground learnt the hard way that the only good Imperial soldier was a dead soldier. Damn the Mater Mundi, she'd find her sister.

—

Owan flicked on the force shield bracelet as she landed, in case. It was a good decision. She was on top of an Imperial gravity barge.

 _Thank you, Imoen_ , she thought, disrupter fire flying around her, and she launched herself at the man at the controls. She boosted, inhuman strength at her command, and cut down men before they could blink. But there were too many marines for even her to fight alone, and she settled for throwing a flash grenade. The gravity barge controls were a smoking ruin.

She was surrounded, her sword flashing faster than human reflexes, but they'd backed her to the edge of the barge. It was falling, the controls shot, but the ground was a long way down. Her force shield blinked out of power. Force shield beats everything, but only when the energy crystal's charged. The Imperials moved in for their kill. They went in close and sure for her. _Three, two, one ..._

Old mercenary's trick. Her force shield flickered into existence again, and two of them lost limbs. Owan cut another marine across his chest. Another soldier brought a disrupter cannon to bear, fighting even as the gravity barge went down. But that wouldn't do any good while her force shield lasted.

Owan realised she'd been wrong when the ground exploded below her feet. She fell, too high to survive the landing. Smoke and flames billowed around her. Damn her for stupidity. The ground fell closer and closer.

Her fall suddenly slowed. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw a child waving at her from the street.

 _Your destiny is elsewhere_ , a high childish voice said in her mind, _and besides, you tried to be nice to us. Get out of here, fast!_

Dradeel's orphaned espers, come out in this dark hour to fight for their city. Maybe the last who hadn't taken the plague. The telekinetic force put her carefully on the ground.

The gravity barge came down over Owan's head, over everyone's heads. She ran far and fast enough to escape the worst of the impact. She let herself out of boost, panting. Couldn't use it too long or you'd die, but she'd die anyway. She'd seen the child here, near this rubble. Had to find him.

The soldiers fighting in the street had other ideas. The Imperials saw their starcruiser blow up, everyone had, but they had their orders. They knew the Empress' penalties for cowardice.

Ourawang led a group of soldiers under a rooftop. Mistworld rebels jumped down for an ambush. Mistworlders might stab each other for a crust of bread on normal days, but against the Empire they fought side by side. They'd earned their freedom the hard way by coming to Mistworld, and they would not surrender it. Free men and women faced down the discipline of the Empire with improvised weapons and sheer desperation, and every step the Empire took cost them dear.

Owan saw a woman wearing nothing but a ragged lace dress plunge a shard of broken glass into a marine's neck. Thieves guarded the City Watch's backs, and Guildswomen fought beside beggars. Captain Havarian and wealthy Lehtinan, once fighters in their youth, went out from their mansions with swords in hand. Even children flung chamberpots and improvised missiles.

One lieutenant kept his cool and called orders to his men. A disrupter took out a section of wall beside Owan, and dust surrounded her. She choked on it, blinded. She was swept forward. She fought a man who knew what he was doing—a real swordsman—and too late she saw the blow coming at her back from behind.

It never connected. The other soldier fell to his knees. Owan crossed blades with the swordsman, brought her leg up into his groin, and stabbed him as he fell. She knew the man who'd saved her. Montaron, withdrawing his sword from the marine's kneecaps and moving forward to guard her back.

"The hell have you been?" he called. His skin was coated black with smoke, he wore a ragged cloak too big for him, and he'd changed his sword and boots since last time Owan saw him. He fought like a street thug turned bruiser, bringing down kneecaps and using every dirty trick in the book.

"Could ask you the same question, shortstuff!" Owan slipped back into boost, where everything her enemies did seemed deathly slow. The battle was sword to sword now, where only cold steel and skill decided who lived and died.

Montaron stepped back suddenly, over an iced patch of ground. He took a cut to his face and yelled out, but his enemy's balance shifted. It was enough for Owan to make the killing blow.

"Getting to know the city," Montaron called. There was an exhaustion in his voice and body, the kind that only came from long battles. The sword he used was made for someone bigger than him, but he didn't give up the fight. They were at the banks of the water now, and the river ran red with blood.

" _Tyranthraxus!_ " Owan cried, the Clan battlecry, and showed them what it meant to make an enemy of a Child of Bhaal.

—

Ruth Hawthorne was at the end of her rope.

She'd been the Empire's property, once, a telepath and polter. She still had the burn scars to show it. She survived the harsh training and escaped in her teens, leaving a lot of friends behind her. Mistworld became her home, and she did everything she could to build the esper union. These days, on the wrong side of forty, she was a senior citizen compared to other espers.

Ruth Hawthorne didn't escape the Empire by believing in fairy tales, and she didn't survive Mistworld by falling on her knees and praying for miracles. It was hard to have faith in anything when you'd seen the Empire fasten electrodes to a young child's head and turn up the voltage. Ruth believed in nothing, and fought for everything she needed. There were people who said she didn't have a life, but she'd spent it all for the esper union. Perhaps if you weren't close to anyone, you escaped most communicable diseases.

She didn't know if she was clear of the plague or only in the early stages, but when the Empire attacked she was ready. She went out with the few surviving espers to do what they could. She let psi storms loose on the Imperial troops, and her companions finished them off. But the steady disrupter fire took its toll. One by one, her defenders on the esper union's rooftop died. The Imperials needed vengeance for their lost ones, and they advanced on her. She tried to hold them back, but she'd used too much of her power already, and she couldn't do more than rattle them. Their leader grinned as he held a disrupter fixed on her. _Esper bitch_ , he thought, and she cursed him as his finger tightened on the trigger.

Then someone grasped her shoulder from behind, and Ruth looked back in astonishment at the Mater Mundi's face. Heads exploded in the terrible psi storm, and when it was done Ruth was the only other person alive on the rooftop.

 _Be of good courage, My daughter_ , the Mater Mundi whispered to her, and disappeared in a teleport.

Ruth Hawthorne fell to her knees, and prayed in thankfulness.

—

The Mater Mundi manifested above Mistport hospital, her energy wings crackling against the sky. The hospital was little more than rubble, targeted deliberately by the Empire's bombs. She teleported the wounded out of the ruin, and made their injuries knit together as new. She sent the espers among them to do Her work in the city, and the last of the living wing adepts flew out to restore Mistworld's potent psionic shield.

They came together in worship at the miracle, praising the goddess for their lives.

—

The Mater Mundi flew over the biggest gravity barge like a low-hanging star. Disrupter cannon blazed around her energy wings, but it could only give her strength. She raised a hand and clenched her fist. The gravity barge followed her direction, and crumpled over itself. The men aboard screamed and cursed her as she crushed them between thin metal sheets, but their suffering did not move her.

She let the gravity barge fall, a useless piece of metal. They all saw the Mater Mundi fly high above the city, like a guardian angel of Mistworld. She'd shown them her true power, and so the Imperial guard feared her with a fear more potent than any worship.

The Mater Mundi saw what She had wrought, and called it good. She teleported her host to safety, with other companions, and vanished.

—

Aerie woke up and screamed.

—

The Imperial forces fully surrendered six hours later.

—


	22. Aftermath: Keldorn

He'd been useless. There was no question about that. The Mater Mundi knew he and the unconscious esper Xzar were worthless, and let them land where the escape pod fell on Mistworld. Ourawang had come to rescue them, just in time to save them from freezing to death.

Keldorn sat in a corner of Ourawang's ship, and tried to avoid meeting anyone's eyes. He ran his fingers over his hip flask, every so often.

Mistport was devastated, and among the missing and the dead lay many of Dradeel's children. Keldorn helped Owan search for them, but with no luck. Because of their isolation at Abraxus, they hadn't taken the plague, but the fate it led them to was worse. When no other espers remained to defend their city, they stepped in and did not return.

The leftover Imperial troops surrendered once they realised there was no other escape, and Mistport was busy cannibalising their equipment to rebuild the city. Mistworld didn't have the facilities to keep prisoners of war, so the soldiers were left with the same choices as everyone else on Mistworld—scrape a living, or starve to death. It was better than the Empire's punishment would be.

Surviving espers flew double the normal patrols, the psionic shield grimly active. When Lloth died in the starcruiser's flaming exit, the espers were set free from the plague, but far too many were already dead. The esper union was carting in espers from the outlying farmlands, making conscripts.

Mistworld needed to rid itself of the plague carriers, the Typhoid Mary and her companions. The Mistport Council said in no uncertain terms it was time for them to depart. Aerie, avatar of the Mater Mundi, was begged to stay—but she had no desire to be a goddess, and wept over all the death the Mater Mundi had forced her to bring.

Owan had wheeled and dealed over one of the few surviving smuggler's ships, and pushed Aerie into a salvage mission she hadn't told anyone else about. It turned out the avariel girl was very familiar with the new alien stardrive, and could sense it from miles away. It was the only piece of the Imperial starcruiser that had survived in working order, an uncanny thing that sent chills up Keldorn's spine. Or it could be his old bones letting him down again.

He raised the hip flask to his mouth, and wished like anything that his liver would let him take a goddamn drink.

—

"This ship is a dump," Turandot complained through the private comlink. Montaron agreed with the AI on that one, but he wasn't going to say anything. "There's hardly enough memory to swing a cat. Let alone house a sophisticated artificial intelligence like me.

"Still, at least _one_ thing is going my way," she hummed throatily. "You would not believe what that dreadful tin can put me through, Monty."

"Some people," Montaron agreed vaguely. He hadn't known Ourawang picked up a Hadenman. Huge unnatural bastard, not as tall as Xzar but hefty, all muscles on muscles and metal. The glowing inhuman eyes would take a hell of a lot of getting used to.

 _And she grabs ol' Keldorn Firecam too_ , Monty thought, looking the old rebel over. No one in the galaxy hadn't heard his name, but this was a skinny bag of bones who'd long outlived his own legend, one foot in the grave and the other longing for it. Ourawang fussed over the old rebel, stooping over him on her way to her captain's seat. _Bet I could take him. That's a huge bounty just waiting a claim._

Owan would probably kill him if he started anything, if the Hadenman didn't get there first. Not to mention the whiny avariel princess. Montaron had seen the fireworks in the sky, same as anyone else in Mistport and probably all of Mistworld. She was some kind of goddess in her off hours, and she'd be incredibly dangerous to piss off. Fucking espers.

There was one way he could think to make this field trip a little more bearable. He went to Ourawang's side. She was a tough broad with a good figure. He'd fought by her and her boost made her unstoppable. But after the battle, she was bleeding in a dozen places and weak as a kitten. Not that he'd been much better off.

"Leave him behind?" Montaron asked, jerking his thumb at Xzar. The guy had always annoyed him, and now he was completely useless. Ill, rambling, and totally unaware of what was going around him.

Blame the fragile-looking girl with the huge bug eyes for that. Aerie had done some esper trick to sever Xzar from the mass mind, and managed to destroy Xzar's esp and whatever was left of his sanity in that stroke. He wasn't an esper any more, and couldn't even stand up to piss.

Owan gave him a look that suggested she saw the sense in what Montaron was saying, but she shook her head. "Aerie's vote. I don't abandon people who work for me," she said. Monty guessed the other half of that line was _Unless I can get away with nobody noticing_.

Owan's fingers moved quickly on the old-fashioned keypad. The star maps adjusted on the screen.

"Change of plans, people," she said. "I was going to lead us to Unseeli, but I'm told that the new stardrive means the metals there are totally useless. We don't have the army we hoped to gather, and most of our resources went on this ship. So it's time to look for what we can get. I have the coordinates to the old Family Standing. I hate to rely on Family, but—the Bhaal line never was short of resources."

The pit of Montaron's stomach sank—heading out to a mystery in the middle of nowhere, with hardly a plan. The Typhoid Mary sat with her bug-eyed friend, too messed up by their shared whining to even listen. Same for Firecam and Xzar, neither of them worth a used rubber. But the Hademan's unnatural green eyes flashed, and he didn't trouble to hide his exultation.

Montaron lay on his back in the engine room, checking and re-tightening every inch of wiring that he could find. He refused to die for lousy maintenance. Owan's weird AI was probably the most sensible fool on this ship.

"You don't think we have a chance in hell of surviving," Montaron said.

"Mmm. I made it through the Knucklebones' destruction," Turandot replied. "Go deeper."

Whoever'd made this ship had skimped majorly on the budget. The crawl spaace was tiny, even for him. The grease on Montaron's elbows slipped him through. He glided into the dark cubbyhole.

"Talk me through it," he said. "I'm not a proper engineer. Used to fix up the circus caravans, when I was a kid."

"You have such a fine touch, Monty," Turandot purred. His fingers stroked the fine wires, gently. Couldn't afford to put an inch wrong here.

"Never had the chance to know something as fine as you," he said, and meant it. Turandot was mostly stored in crystal matrices—intricate, shimmering things he'd need a nano-microscope to even look at. Montaron's hands lingered on a wired connection. He stroked a secret command, and her new menu unfolded beautifully before him like a sunrise. _Things I could do with that ..._

"Deeper," Turandot said, and he willingly obliged. Montaron shifted backward, and a strange shiver chilled down his spine. It felt hot and cold at the same time.

"What's this?" he asked, but something in him already knew.

"Don't go any close to that thing. It'll hurt you," Turandot said. "They put the alien stardrive inside me, and if that bug-eyed little esper understands it, it's a hell of a lot better than I can do ..." Her voice hummed something, a strange tune that didn't make any sense to Monty. "I feel like it's expanding me, in places I don't want to go. This is why I can't stand espers. The new stardrive doesn't run on normal rules, and so my consciousness has to change to accommodate it. I'm a category-eleven intelligence, and I'm growing."

That changed the chill up Montaron's spine to a cold fear. He felt he'd been spun upside down without knowing it. Everyone knew what happened to AIs who grew a little too much.

"Not thinking of running anywhere soon?" he asked. "Like, Shub?"

Shub took AIs who burst their bounds, and it so happened that Shub's goal was to destroy humanity. No sane person messed around with Shub.

 _Be good, or the AIs of Shub will get you._

"Not even close," Turandot said scornfully. Montaron held the small oil tube carefully. Just a drop on the joints and connections, for all he knew the last purified Aurum-level almond oil on Mistworld. Smooth her out. The AI seemed to like it, making sounds that were practically purring. "I couldn't leave Owan, you see. We're all but sisters."

Montaron thought of Ourawang, naked and filthy the first time he'd seen her, and later, fighting for her life in Mistport. He couldn't imagine Owan signing her life over to Shub or anyone, and maybe it was the same for her AI.

"She bought me when she was just starting out as a mercenary, and my personality's shaped after hers," Turandot mused. "Including all the bits of her she doesn't want for public consumption." She laughed, a deep throaty too-many-cigarettes tone. "Owan's all look-at-me-I'm-a-big-tough-warrior in public, but in private she likes music."

Turandot sang. It was strange to hear a woman's voice, here in the cramped depths of the ship. She warbled him an old song with queer harmonies, out of some bygone era. From what Montaron could make out of the words, it was about a woman who killed all the men she found unsatisfactory.

It was gonna be a real ... interesting ... trip.

—

It gets dark there, out on the Rim.

The Imperial starcruiser dropped into open space. The Darkwind had been closest, and so they'd been instructed to pursue. None of the crew had ever gone so far out on the Rim before, where according to all the star charts there was nothing but darkness. The Darkvoid Device long ago destroyed a thousand suns and a vast region of space in one moment.

But the ship's navigation system showed a star, a vast dying red sun, and a single living planet in orbit.

The starcruiser's sensors quickly found and identified the small craft heading toward the planet at tremendous speed. The _Foggy Pot_ , a known smuggler. Not that the name mattered. The Empire wanted it stopped, and the Darkwind was there to obey orders.

"Order it to halt," the Captain relayed to her comms officer. Their orders were clear. One chance to surrender, then fire at will.

The ship was clearly a Mistworld vessel, and any fool could've guessed that the outlaws were linked with the Empire's recent defeat. But officially the battle never happened, and only dangerous whispers suggested the truth.

A starcruiser's military might against a tiny craft wasn't exactly fair, but the Empire itself generally wasn't.

"No response, Captain."

"Weapons officer, fire."

He looked up. "They're accelerating, Captain. I'm waiting on a clear bead."

A small ship couldn't be this fast. The starcruiser went to its top speed short of entering hyperspace, and still the small craft's distance did not diminish.

"Fire now."

The disrupter cannons tore through space. Their aim wasn't perfect, but it didn't need to be. Few things can survive a direct hit with a disrupter cannon, and a small two-credit Mistworld smuggler wasn't one of them.

"Captain, sensors show wreckage falling to planetside," the navigator reported.

 _An escape pod._ "What readings can you get from the planet, Lieutenant?"

"A dense collection of trace elements in the air disrupt our sensors, Captain. But there's a ninety-percent likelihood the air's breathable. It's probable the planet was terraformed to create these effects."

"Continue data collection. Prepare a landing party, full gear. One company of marines, the Investigator, ship's esper, and myself. We approach this as a planet full of alien hostiles. Lieutenant, prepare a sensor briefing in fifteen."

The Investigator snapped to attention and an enthusiastic salute, and the esper looked soured and pained.

"Captain. I have a precognition of impending doom, and I wouldn't recommend that you risk yourself on a totally unknown planet at the edge of the Rim ..."

"Can your esp pick up anything definite?"

He sighed. "Yes, Captain. There were two espers aboard that ship, one of them with incredible power. If the apocryphal myth that espers are born of demons were true, we've brushed with the ruler of hell. Or the other place."

"Then we'll have you and the Investigator to deal with them. Dismissed, esper."

Captain Dynaheir felt her field suit's fabric settle around her, and the survival elements in the collar kicked into action. She was about to scour a planet and send sixty-three men after a small group of escaped slaves.

Two decades ago, Dynaheir graduated young from the Imperial Academy, dreaming of protecting people across the Empire. She would have hated her older self. Years of compromise, lies, and genocide will do that for you. But, over the years, she hadn't had a choice.

The Empire was brutal. And without it, planets would fall into hunger, cold, and death, especially the outer edges of the Empire. Aliens and rogue AIs waited in the dark, ready to lay waste to all the human worlds if the Empire showed the slightest sign of weakening. The planet Grendel was where Dynaheir personally saw what lay ahead.

Grendel was a dead world by the time the Empire found it, alien cities covered by choking clouds of ash. Dynaheir descended with her away team, the Investigator standing point. Investigators were trained since childhood to be the best of the best, and that meant the best at killing aliens. The team went below the surface, and found level upon level of shining vaults. Machinery still functioned, a combination of steel and flesh that beat like a heart in a jar. Thinking machines were mounted in the wall as if they grew there. Row over row of silver coffers lay between them, fleshy wires running through them. It wasn't sane.

The Investigator decided to open one of the vaults, to see what was inside. He blasted open a coffin with a shaped charge. The Sleeper awoke.

Dynaheir saw a nightmare in scarlet silicon armour, claws and red mouth. It moved too quickly to be anything other than a blur, and disrupter fire did nothing to it. The Grendel ripped through her troops in moments. The Investigator, bleeding badly from many head wounds, grabbed her and concealed them both below corpses. Most of his skull was caved in. Dynaheir lay pressed against the side of the Sleeper's steel coffin and waited. She and the Investigator hid in the Sleeper's ruins for three and a half days, found a working comm unit from a corpse, and made it back to the ship. She'd never forget the names of the men who died through her decision.

The Empire sent in attack troops, battle espers, even Wampyr, but none of them survived. One Sleeper wiped out every invader to its planet. The Fleet had to scorch the planet's surface. Luckily the Grendel had no starships. Tens of thousands of more Sleepers lay in the Grendel vaults. Unstoppable killing machines, too powerful to be anything but gengineered. The alien precursors had placed the Sleepers here and then departed. If the Grendels were a nightmare and a threat because they could destroy anything the Empire could throw at them: how much more disturbing was the enemy the Grendels were created to fight?

For humanity to have any chance at all, that meant a united Empire. A long time ago, Dynaheir swore to serve the Empress for the rest of her days. Her honour was tarnished as the Empire itself, but she would keep that oath.

—


	23. Last Standing: Montaron

Ourawang whooped and cheered as they hurtled down through the atmosphere, trapped in mountains of sticky crash webbing. Montaron shook his head, amused. How could you not admire a woman like that? Then his mind went to more pressing concerns, such as getting out of this alive.

This world was Tyranthraxus, legendary lost planet of House Bhaal. Their founding Lord fled here, hiding from the Empire way back in the day, and hadn't come back. The jungle below them accelerated closer at an amazing rate.

"Can't you slow it down?" Montaron yelled.

"I'm trying!" Turandot carolled. She'd come with them as the ship blew apart. "Hold on ..."

The engine spurted. The pod glided over more treetops, then over what looked like a wide deep lake. Montaron swallowed, and even Owan shut up. The engines sputtered dangerously. There was nothing any of them could do, trapped in the crash webbing.

Keldorn Firecam wore the resigned look of a man who'd seen plenty of other starship crashes and was trying to rate this one out of ten. Xzar lay with his head down, probably drifting in and out of consciousness again. Not an esper anymore, worthless. If Xzar still had his powers he could've done something to the ship, but damn the other two useless espers.

"Im! Set us on fire!" Owan yelled. "Set the engines on fire! We need some kind of lift—"

But Owan's sister was confused and in a panic, practically screaming her head off, and the bird-brained avariel esper wasn't going to help either.

The engines cut back into life, just long enough to take them over the water. And then it was down into the trees, with enough screaming and flames for hell.

"—That's what I call a decent landing," Owan said not much later, counting heads. "Nobody's dead."

They were in a jungle. Montaron hadn't seen any place like this before, except in the odd holo. It wasn't anything like a zoo. The trees stretched everywhere, covering the sky and ground. The canopy was at least thirty feet in the air, but it still felt cramped here. Heat sunk into his bones. Sticky sap ground into his skin, and he could hear a distant howling. His hands were scorched, but he told himself he could still hold a sword. Whatever natives lived on the Lord of Murder's planet couldn't be friendly.

Aerie had come to life again, long enough to bandage up Imoen's broken collarbone. The Hadenman's unnatural green eyes scanned the treeline while he said nothing.

Owan scratched her ear, conferencing with Turandot. "We're about fifteen miles off our destination. Not too bad. I have the route. We'll get there by suns—"

That was when the winged monster swooped down from the trees. It was big and leathery, and had wicked claws. Others followed it swiftly.

Montaron drew his sword. It wasn't the blade Melmotte ordered custom made for him; it was just a Mistworld weapon picked up at second hand. It held an edge and would have to do.

Gengineered freaks. They looked like apes crossed with birds, and maybe they'd been human a long time ago. Their mouths were stuffed with fangs, cracked and blackened by other prey they'd eaten, and their wings were tipped with claws and feathers.

Owan sunk her sword into the first one's torso, but its teeth closed like a steel trap around her face. Montaron tried to slice open the wing. It gushed with black blood. Adam took on three of them at once, fighting with inhuman might. One of the creatures went for Keldorn. The old man could barely hold his sword, and ran for it—straight down a gully. Like the broken-down coward he was.

Ourawang threw the thing off her with a yell, and broke their line to chase after Firecam. A bloody stupid thing to do, which was more or less what Montaron yelled after her.

Monty stepped over the body. More company headed this way. The claws caught on his sword arm, and he barrelled into the thing with his full weight. He wasn't stupid—animals needed a light build to fly, and he was heavier than most people expected. He grappled the bird freak down to his height and slit its throat.

Aerie screamed as if he'd done it to her. "They're people! Don't kill them!"

Adam was surrounded, and one of them took a strip of flesh off his back. Montaron saw the creature chew. Then the Hadenman punched his way through its body.

Ourawang dragged Keldorn back. "Imoen! Fire would be good about now!" She met another attack with her sword, fighting for her life and Firecam's.

"No, don't!" Aerie shrieked. Suddenly, the creatures turned tail and fled in a tattered gaggle, wings flapping away. Aerie bent forward, retching. "They ... I s-sent fear at them," she said. "It won't last long."

Ourawang offered a hand to Imoen. "Fire would've been a stupid idea anyway," she muttered, "the whole Empire could've seen it."

"What the hell are they?" Last time Montaron saw something like this, it was a middle-aged circus bloke dressed up in a sweaty costume. He felt sick staring at the bodies. The burns on his hands hurt more than ever.

"People," Aerie repeated, "they used to be people, before they were abandoned here, I don't know why—probably because people like you call them freaks and hunt them, and—"

"The Family legends mention this stuff," Owan said. "In the First Empire, the scientists tested gengineering out and created a lot of monsters. In the end they dumped the monsters on Tyranthraxus, because nobody else wanted them and because Bhaal wanted a deadly security system. Every living thing here's a gengineered reject, made more monstrous as its race survived this planet. You didn't think avariel came out of nowhere, did you?"

"My p-people would never—" Aerie shook her head, tightened her lips, and thankfully said nothing more.

"Let's get going." Owan tightened the straps on a simple pack. "Esper, keep doing what you're doing as long as you can. It's a long hike, and we need to beat the Empire there."

Adam stood above Xzar, looking down with a creepy detached interest in his face, like a kid staring at an ant on a pin. The madman hadn't freed himself from the crash webbing, and lay there with a vacant grin on his face. He wasn't an esper any more, and like hell Owan or Adam could carry him and fight at the same time. Ourawang approached him.

Xzar blinked. His eyes cleared, and for a rare moment he sounded almost lucid. "You know what you have to do to me. You'd better. I know what the Empire will do to me, and I swear I'd sing like a canary. Maybe not like a parrot. It's hard to spit out puzzle pieces whole, when the joins between them are so much more interesting to chase." A shrill howl echoed somewhere in the jungle, not too far away, and Xzar tilted his head toward it. "I don't think their plans for me would be any better."

He was asking for a quick death. Owan raised her sword.

"Monty," Xzar said, and Montaron cringed that the crazy guy was looking at him, "could you do it? For me?"

From the first moment that he saw Xzar, Monty wanted to put a sword through his guts. But he'd rather have done it when the madman wasn't asking for it.

"Guess someone's got to do it," he said.

"No! You c-cant just—" Aerie flung herself on the ground between them. "It's all my fault, I made him like this! The Mater Mundi makes me kill and kill and like it. You can't murder him because it's convenient, not when I'm the one who did it. Why don't you kill me?" she begged, her large eyes brimming with unshed tears.

Not such a bad idea, Montaron thought.

"I have an idea." Imoen reached into her sleeves with her good hand. She drew out a vial of something black and clogged. She waved it in front of Xzar's face. "Think this is worth a try, terrorist?"

Melmotte didn't go much into the drug markets, and so Montaron wouldn't have recognised the stuff if it wasn't for his short time on Mistworld. Blood, the blood from a Wampyr. Wampyr fed droplets of their own blood to their slaves, dined on human blood in return, and sold Blood for millions on the black market. It was powerful enough to turn a cripple into a gladiator, while the effects lasted.

Xzar gave a small nod.

Using only her left hand, Imoen whipped out a hollow needle and plunged it into Xzar's neck. She was baby-faced and all mopey about what the Empire had made her do, but Montaron knew the woman was a high-up veteran in the underground.

He should remember that, he thought, as the screaming started. Xzar sounded like a warehouse full of frightened women, or maybe dogs, being slaughtered. Even Adam looked disturbed.

The Blood took effect. Xzar's veins pulsed, standing out on his skin like ropes. He stopped screaming as abruptly as he'd started. He forced himself out of the crash webbing, stood upright, and inhumanly quickly grabbed the vial from Imoen.

"Well? Aren't you coming?" he demanded.

Ourawang set them a punishing pace through the jungle. It was hot and sticky below the canopy, and no matter where they went the monsters weren't far away. All Monty could do was keep his head down, try to keep up, and ignore the whiners.

Sweat and other things trickled into places he didn't want to name. The planet was a neverending gladiator pit. Monsters tried to kill each other just for looking at each other funny, or being in more or less the same place at the same time. Montaron lost count of the types of gengineered freak, birdmen and reptiloids and men's pale heads spliced to spider bodies. The fish were as big as he was and had teeth. Montaron's sword dripped with blood in alien colours. He could feel the prints of a giant python's scales around his head. If Adam hadn't shot the snake with an energy crystal in his finger, well ... Didn't bear thinking of.

Montaron was in a swamp that went up to his waist and tried to fight from there. It was all right for some. Adam was a Hadenman and didn't mind any of it, inhuman skill in a walking slab of muscle and metal. Ourawang was one of Bhaal's bastards, and took the brunt of the attacks alongside Adam. Imoen flung around small bursts of flame with her mind. Even Xzar kept himself together, thanks to the Blood. He didn't have his esp back, but he guarded Adam's flank with his long knives, slicing up anything that slipped past the Hadenman with bloodthirst and glee.

Montaron didn't bloody belong here, on this hell of a planet, trying to keep up with living legends. He fought upwards through the canyon, a treacherous valley hollowed out by some earthquake. It was dark here, and the rocks moved. He indulged a violent fantasy about what he'd like to do to the Lord Bhaal who created this place—something involving maggots and wounds gone putrid, or feed his body to a clonelegger's knives while he was still alive ...

Montaron swore as a monster leapt out at him. The scary thing was that these particular freaks looked exactly like rocks until they moved, and tried to bite your ankles off. They were small man-shaped things, covered by invulnerable stone and with diamond sharp teeth and claws. All you could do was kick them down the scree and hope they weren't massing an army there. Then another one had hold of his ankle and wouldn't let go. The needle teeth bit bone-deep. Montaron tried to kick it off, but it wouldn't budge. Stabbing it did nothing. He couldn't scramble up the last part of the cliff.

Owan reached down and wrapped her right hand firmly around his wrist. She pulled Montaron up the rest of the way, and he kicked off the freak to the rocks below. He was panting and bleeding as he stumbled on a pointy shrub, but managed to keep his feet. Keldorn Bloody Firecam was up there already, staying away from any real trouble like an old campaigner. The canopy was dark above them and a ball of fire floating above Imoen's hand lit the jungle with eerie flickers.

Aerie tried to use her powers to keep the monsters away, or at least said she was trying. She'd a nosebleed that dripped from her chin, though it wasn't like she was actually wounded. And the way she'd cry and scream when they killed their enemies, you'd never hear the end of it. The freaks wouldn't want to eat something so pathetic. Aerie tripped over a hillock, and didn't get up.

"I c-can't do it! I can't walk any more!" She sniffled and spat out blood. "Just leave me! J-just go away!"

Imoen was over her in a second, pleading for her to go on. Montaron wasn't impressed. This was a worse temper tantrum than even Keldorn Firecam could throw. Tears and snot erupted out of Aerie, blending with blood and dirt.

"C'mon, just a little further." Imoen drew a muddy forearm across her own forehead. "Can't give up now, kiddo!"

"I'm p-probably older than you! Avariel age d-differently, and we don't walk around like worms in the dark!" she screamed. "Ever s-since I lost my wings, I had to crawl! It took years before I could even walk! I should have died. Uncle Quayle's dead. They're all dead." She shrank into the vegetation like a flea trying to bury itself, and sobbed more softly. "All of you kill without mercy. Even Imoen. There's blood on all of your hands, and you wallow in it like grubs in spoilt milk."

Imoen's fingers curled into fists, and she planted her hands on her waist. "Y' might not've heard, but I'm pretty high up in the underground," she said, "kind of a big deal. Accredited hero of the rebellion, at least until Sarevok the Widowmaker killed all our friends. I was up there plotting with the leaders, you were down there helping refugees escape. That means you get up and walk."

"I c-can't and I won't!" Aerie rooted herself to the spot. "Bhaal's poison ruined this planet. It's steeped in death, death and bloodshed from surface to marrow. I refuse to live like this."

Ourawang hauled her up by the shoulder. Dirt, blood, and bruises covered her too. "Walk, Aerie," she said, and when that didn't work, she scientifically slapped her across the face.

Imoen snatched Owan back. "Don't do that! You big bully," she complained. "Stupid meathead! Force doesn't solve everything, you know!"

"What do you know, you little brat?" Owan thundered back. Truth be told, Monty thought, she was shorter than Imoen. "Let me handle this!"

"What do you know about _anything_? I'd be surprised if you know how to read a book that doesn't have pictures of swords in it!" Imoen snapped.

"You always get yourself into trouble you can't handle! Who dropped Firebead's best cloak down the catacombs and needed me to rescue it from the droids? Who got caught hacking into the Tantalus system for extra butter-pies?"

They totally ignored Aerie.

"Who stuffed her face with those butter-pies? I was waiting for you to explode, fatso!" Imoen called.

"I remember you back when you wished you had cleavage, you beanpole!" Owan yelled.

"You had so many pimples, you'd crack mirrors by looking at them!"

Ourawang thumped Imoen heavily on the back. "I've missed you, sis."

Im clasped her in return. "Yeah, yeah, same thing." She grinned a blink-and-you'd-miss-it smile, then looked back down at Aerie. "So what do we do with her?"

Owan was looking at Montaron now, and he didn't much like it. "Carry her," she said.

The avariel priss was light, much lighter than he was. Ourawang hadn't estimated that part too badly. Montaron hauled Aerie up in a fireman's carry, ignoring the feeble beating of her fists. He couldn't understand a word of her sobs, although it was probably begging to be put down. He didn't mind the weight, and could have taken much worse.

What he minded was being ticketed for the second worst in the group.

"March on. Can't afford to waste any more time," Owan said. Montaron trudged through the jungle.

—

Xan knew the Imperial expedition was doomed. He'd known it was doomed since the beginning. Xan was an esper forced to join the Imperial forces, now under the command of Captain Dynaheir, and the latest mission had got the better of him before they'd even made planetfall. It was a mysterious lost planet to start with, which was a sure premonition of doom, and it was covered by tall thick nasty-looking trees. Xan didn't trust nature.

He'd be eaten by horrific gengineered monsters, preferably after he was dead, but he wasn't holding out hope for even that much.

He kept his head down as they tramped through the swamp, while his boots stuck in the mire and his feet ached with impending blisters. One unlucky marine got lost in the swamp, and a gargantuan creature closed its teeth around his waist. Hopefully, he hadn't lasted long after that. Another idiot kicked a funny looking rock, and Xan looked away from what happened to him. Howlings and screechings mixed with intermittent screams echoed in his ears. Touching the creatures' minds was even worse.

The Investigator, of course, was cheerful as the proverbial pig in mud. Lots of aliens to kill always made an Investigator happy, and these gengineered monsters were the next best thing. Minsc had served on Dynaheir's ship almost as long as she'd held her Captain's commission. Xan suspected no other command would've taken him with a free admiralty thrown in. Minsc was the ideal Investigator in that he was about twice as big as a normal man and had muscles like miniature mountains, but he'd lost even an Investigator's complicated definition of sanity a long time ago. He and Dynaheir were on the same mission when the Grendel alien attacked, and he saved her life and had his head caved in for his trouble. The gossip from the crew was that he'd never been the same since the steel plate was implanted in his head. Minsc covered his scars with purple tattoos that he said had ancestral meaning, but he never specified what. He was unstoppable on the battlefield, and for everywhere else he relied on the Captain's orders. Minsc's heavy claymore whirled and cut into gengineered monsters on a hostile planet, and he didn't show signs of tiring at all.

Xan was old for an esper, in his early thirties, and so he'd served on a number of commands. He'd stayed alive on Captain Dynaheir's ship for almost a year now. Xan supposed she could be a worse sort, for a willing servant of a tyrannical, genocidal regime. Sometimes, Xan almost thought her crew had a chance of a relatively low casualty rate in their latest suicidal mission given by a sadistic Empress. Espers weren't supposed to have such thoughts, but Xan couldn't give a damn. He was a doomed man in any case.

"I can't read anything useful from the minds here. There are far too many of them, all insane and bloodthirsty," he said. "They were human, once, and now they're alien as the worst of aliens."

Dynaheir accepted that. "Then we won't find them that way," she said. "Keep yourself in reserve."

The outlaws had landed on a typical Mistport smuggler's ship—even the wreckage had its decoys. The Empire forces landed near the predicted trajectory of the escape pod, but what they found was only rubble. Xan's mind had reached out to the outlaw ship, touching it for only a moment, and detected a strange esper who burned with strength like a god. Taking that level of power on would be utterly hopeless, even if they managed to reach the outlaws before they were devoured by the jungle.

"I want a search for visual ambiguities in the canopy," Dynaheir ordered her lieutenant back on the ship. "Try this sector first."

Xan understood her: the outlaws were searching for something on this planet, and it was likely shielded to sensors. But even the most sophisticated shield couldn't replicate everything on a planet.

There was a pause, and disrupter fire flared. Xan screamed and covered his face as he saw giant winged things descend down his way. Espers weren't allowed weapons, and there was no way he could defend himself from inevitable death.

When he looked up, Dynaheir was breathing heavily with her sword in a downed creature. It had wide black batlike wings, and a mouth full of cracked teeth. Xan shivered, and stepped delicately over it.

The Captain's comm unit crackled into life again. Xan caught her successful look before she gave the order to move out.

—

There was nothing before them, only yet another clearing in the fucking jungle. Montaron had Aerie's damned dead weight on his back the whole time, and he was much more exhausted than he wanted anyone to notice. He'd a terrible thirst. Sweat dripped from his forehead, and trying to keep the noise of his panting down was too much for him.

Owan stopped suddenly. Montaron nearly crashed into her back. This bit of jungle looked the same as all the others, except there wasn't as much howling now. A small grass clearing, and then more and more tangles of overambitious trees looking exactly the same as everywhere else on Tyranthraxus. The quietness set Montaron's teeth on edge even worse than the noise.

"Don't see anything funny," Imoen complained. "Wild goose chase?"

Owan turned her head, probably asking her weird AI. "No mistake," she finally said. "This is it. Bhaal's Last Standing."

Adam turned on them. "Get down!" he yelled, and that was when the Imperial disrupters fired.

—


	24. Bhaal's Legacy: Imoen

Looked like the bloody Imperials were dead on time. Ha, no pun intended, Imoen thought. Montaron, the little bastard, let Aerie's unresponsive body roll to the ground and he ran.

Imoen reached out with her mind, the way she'd only just learnt to do, and called the fire. It kindled with the warmth from her blood, and burnt her enemies without mercy.

"Owan! Middle section!" Imoen screamed, and in the smoke she'd left behind felt a disrupter beam shear a hair's breadth away from her. The force shield bracelet she'd given Owan had a few Mistport tricks up its sleeve. Ourawang reached for it as she leapt over Aerie, and activated it just in time to save them all.

The wider spread cost more power, but when a force shield was up nothing could get past it. Except esp never even noticed it was there. Imoen saw and heard marines melting in their armour, and the fire in her consumed everything. She'd have her revenge for everyone she betrayed and killed.

She couldn't feel her own body any more. She flew away free and untouchable, a phoenix wreathed in hellfire, casting her flames at any and all enemies. The jungle burnt in a raging inferno, and the ashes of Imoen's enemies joined a grand sacrificial pyre. She wouldn't stop until they were all dead, dead for Alora's sake and Sarevok the Widowmaker's sake and the terrible plague Irenicus forced inside her. She was tortured into finding her pyrokinetic esp, and she'd make them suffer for it. Let them all burn.

Imoen lost herself, and then she was drowning. She choked on dirty water. Someone slapped her face. She opened her eyes, soaking wet. For some reason she was steaming.

"You can't do that!" a young man told her. Imoen didn't recognise his bare face until she remembered, Xzar the terrorist. "You'll immolate yourself. Look!" He waved Imoen's own hand in her face. Imoen stared blankly at the burnt flesh, red and black sausages hanging from her hand, and the steam rising from it due to the canteen thrown at her. "I've known eight-year-olds with more control of their esp than you. Of course, if they didn't, they'd be broken down for spare parts."

Owan had set them up with a cover of a ridge and thick trees, behind the smoke and flames Imoen created. She smelt the smoke, and saw the bright blaze burning throughout the jungle, a firestorm too strong to be quenched. Had she really done all that? Imoen couldn't tell. Aerie lay in the dirt, curled into a small ball. Owan had her disrupter out.

"Pyros. You'll burn yourself from the inside out even before your brain dribbles out of your ears," Xzar said. He ran his fingers across Imoen's hands as if he were fascinated by her injuries, which made her feel sick. "Espers don't have limitless power. Don't pretend to be _her_." He glanced possessively at Aerie. It was hard to hear him above the firefight, but he was still really creepy.

Imoen wrenched herself up to her knees. She didn't feel pain yet, but it was hard to move. Not much she could do now.

The Imperial army came out of the tree line just as Owan's force shield lost power. Their Captain stood in the centre, a tall dark middle-aged woman, regal looking, with an Investigator three times her size standing at her right hand.

Adam raised his hand with golden metal implants, and aimed his disrupter at the Imperials before they could fire. The Investigator with the purple tattoos rushed forward, swinging his heavy sword, but the disrupter beam hit him dead centre. He and all the marines behind him were vaporised, and Imoen was pretty sure the Captain was gone too. Disrupters didn't leave any human remains or even much of a smell behind, but they were sure at killing.

Imperials always did well on numbers. Other marines came forward, crying for revenge for their ship's Captain. Adam wasn't done yet. He fried everyone in his path. Imoen closed her eyes, for the barrage was searingly bright now. Surely he'd killed them all.

Then the brightness died. Imoen opened her eyes, and Adam flung a drained energy crystal to the ground.

"That was the last, daughter of Bhaal," he said, and lowered his golden arm. "I leave myself in your hands."

The way before them seemed clear. The Imperial marines were gone, vaporised by disrupter fire. Imoen squinted. She couldn't see too well. Her eyes were dimmed from all the smoke, and felt strangely dry.

Adam suddenly swore. "An esper trick!" he said, and the real Imperial army walked out of the jungle to surround them.

Some of the surviving marines were burned, but still upright, and there were too many of them to fight. Imoen saw the Captain for real this time, her grim expression too strong to be anything but the true version, and an Imperial esper in his black uniform stood by her left hand.

 _Surrender._ Imoen's mind moved slower than a Second Empire processor. Of course they had to surrender. The most sensible thing was to lay down all their weapons and tools, give up and die. Her head sagged down. Owan was thinking the same thing, and Aerie had already given up. Xzar stood there like a wooden puppet with its strings cut, and then there were the others nodding in agreement.

But giving up wasn't in Imoen Winthrop's nature, and a small flicker of rebellion stirred in her.

 _Hey_ , Imoen said in her head, _it's another esp trick, isn't it?_ She didn't like fighting Imperial espers, because she'd known from Gorion and the underground how the Empire treated them. You did what you had to.

Their minds were linked into one command, _freeze_. It grabbed even Adam's half-machine mind. _Owan_ , Imoen thought. Her sister glanced at Aerie as if she hoped for another rescue from a goddess. Nothing happened.

They were linked together in Irenicus' hellhole, Ourawang and Imoen and Aerie, and now the Imperial esper bound them together with one command. Imoen could feel the touch of Owan's and Aerie's minds again. She relied on her friends to give her strength.

And Owan slipped into boost, faster and stronger than any human had a right to be, her reflexes moving quickly past the Imperial esper's control. It wouldn't last long, but then again it didn't have to. Ourawang reached into her boot and drew out a throwing dagger, and flung it through the air dead into the esper's chest.

The Investigator shouted, and raising his sword ran forward. That gave them a little more time, since the Imperial troops didn't dare fire on an Investigator.

A line of blood ran down Ourawang's face. She turned and yelled into the empty clearing—

"I'm Owan, child of Bhaal! Let us through! _Tyranthraxus!_ "

She ran into the clearing. She didn't have to yell at the others to follow. Imoen stumbled behind her, while Xzar pulled Aerie along by an arm, and Keldorn and Montaron and Adam came past in a confused mess.

Imoen expected the Investigator's sword to cut her in half any moment, or Imperial disrupters to kill them all, but nothing happened. She leant forward on herself, panting, and then looked up at what was before them.

The jungle was gone. Ourawang was running toward a giant stone castle that hadn't been there before, rising twenty skyscrapers above the surface. Imoen looked back, and saw the Investigator hit an invisible shield like a raging bull. He was flung back by the barrier, landing flat on his back. Disrupter fire flew in their direction, but all of it was reflected by the invisible shield.

Powerful computers, to create an illusion for a castle this size and selectively open shielding for Bhaal's children, Imoen thought. But there was no time to wonder. The Imperial army was at the gates, and Owan went back to help Imoen along with her broken collarbone.

Then suddenly they were racing across a long featureless stone floor, cramped in by a low ceiling and walls without windows. They'd been teleported, at some incredibly high power cost. And Ourawang commanded this power.

She'd been a kid with grazed knees when Imoen knew her, running wild around the Tartaros Library grounds, climbing trees and chasing rogue datasaurs. Looking back on it, Owan hadn't been ordinary; and ol' Gorion and Dan Winthrop hadn't been either. Gorion used to hide his esper skills from Imoen, until she discovered and decoded his private journals. Then she found out his and Dan's rebel connections, and ran away to join the underground herself. They weren't an ordinary family.

This went beyond extraordinary. The stone rooms and corridors looked barely lived in, undecorated and blank. Imoen shivered; it was cold as the depths of a cave. Their footsteps all echoed in the empty structure. Someone had built all this, and never even bothered to live in it. How incredibly lazy.

They accidentally stepped through another teleport, without being aware of the trigger point, and found themselves in another long stone corridor by another alcove. This one was decorated by one thing, a glass case with three waxworks in it. Imoen wandered over to look.

Two men and one woman, dressed dating back to the First Empire. They wore mercenary's scalplocks, there were bloody holes in their battle armour, and their eyes were open in three unnerving stares. Imoen looked more closely, and jumped back. She was suddenly certain they were three corpses.

"Extraordinary preservation technique ..." Xzar was saying, leaning forward so that his breath misted against the glass. "You can barely see the needle marks. They died, presumably violently. These holes in the armour weren't made with a dagger or a miniature disrupter, in case you were wondering. The striations suggest some sort of ancient projectile weapon. Someone removed their internal organs, replaced them with preservatives, and put them on display." He sniffed, his nose pressed to the case. "I'd like to take notes on that formula. Anyone want to give me a closer look?"

"Shadow Men," Owan read off a small plaque next to the case, "Aran Linvail, Renal Bloodscalp, Anishai Monos." She fell silent for a moment, conferring with Turandot. "The Shadow Men were feared and famous assassins in their day. They tracked the first Lord Bhaal to Tyranthraxus, and according to legend they killed him."

But instead Bhaal, or someone, killed and stuffed and mounted them. They walked on. Imoen saw Montaron give Xzar a sharp push to set him moving again. The crippled ex-esper was starting to droop again, the effects of the Blood starting to wear off as exhaustion set in. Imoen knew the signs, and figured that the terrorist probably deserved it. She didn't want to look at her burns, and her arm was in constant, dull pain. Secret pyrokinetic all this time, like ol' Gorion the polter, and she hadn't known it. Maybe it was just another weapon Imoen could use against the Imperials.

Imoen shivered. Silver ropes of mist wound around them. Another undetectable teleport stole them away into a hall of mists and mirrors, silver glittering from all sides like the walls of a carnival maze. Her reflections followed her. She glanced at herself, walking slow and wounded and distorted in the many mirrors.

Her image in the reflections changed, so gradually that she did not notice the process. She saw herself in better days, Imoen the rebel cyberrat who could take on anyone and anything. The mirror showed her going down under a pile of Aloras, celebrating and laughing over their first heist together. They'd stolen an Imperial shipment full of disrupter crystals, and used them to power a clean water system for refugees instead. Imoen saw her avatar in cyberspace, a pink-ribboned rogue who'd dance through systems leaving nothing behind but an echo of laughter. She saw herself on a battlefield, laughing wildly as men burned all around her. She saw herself in a silhouetted shadow, kissing someone as if their lives depended on it, but she couldn't tell whom.

 _Yeah, I'm pretty sure I gave the esper plague to all my ex-girlfriends on Mistport_ , she thought, and would've drowned deeper in the reflection of her regrets if Xzar's high-pitched voice hadn't cut through her nerves.

"Monty, did I tell you about the rabbits?" he burst out. "I wanted a warren of my own. Somewhere away from the city, with fresh grass and real trees."

"What the hell is this place?" Montaron yelled. "These things need smashing!"

"It even knows what my mother looks like," Xzar went on. "Or at least I do—do you see what I see? Can I see what you see? Lend me an eyeball, Monty!"

"It shows you what you want to see," Keldorn Firecam interrupted, and for once the old man spoke loud and clear. But the mirrors next to him were only shadows.

 _This is what he sees_ , someone whispered inside her mind, and Imoen's head whipped around to Aerie. She sent Imoen an image of a younger Keldorn, standing with a beautiful blonde woman and two daughters. _It's sad ... he's lost so much_ , Aerie said in Imoen's head.

"I don't care," Imoen said aloud, "the Empire is here, and they will break down that shield." But she concentrated, and the link between her and Owan and Aerie was there as always. She saw Aerie's dream of flying on an alien planet, all magnificent jagged cliffs overrun with thick green vines while Aerie soared above on wide white wings—Imoen had totally called that one coming—while Owan saw a whole lot.

Owan was in the Arena, swinging her sword over the bloody sands as the Masked Gladiator kept on coming. She stood in the darkness of Golgotha sewers, holding a flaming lantern while a nest of Wampyr flew for her throat. She was in the Imperial court, her battle armour stained in blood, and crowned herself as Empress on the Iron Throne. She leant against a church pillar, dressed as a bride in a white veil. She went down below a company of Imperial marines, fighting for her life at the last.

Owan paced through stone corridors, utterly alone. She walked slowly, as if she were utterly exhausted, and then Imoen saw the wound in her side. She held her cloak balled up to staunch it, but blood dripped slowly onto the ground. Imoen could see death in that vision.

Then it broke. Adam forced open a door at the other end of the hall of mirrors, and they walked forward on a frozen ice floor. This new chamber was vast, and almost as bare as the stone corridors and chambers. Except for the tall ice-encrusted cylinder in the centre of the room. Wires from it disappeared into the floor, and a small control panel was set at waist height. Imoen shivered, glaring up at the icy high ceiling, which glinted with shining crystals.

"A preservation chamber," said Adam. Despite his bare chest, he didn't even seem to be getting goosebumps. As they came closer, they saw a shadowy figure inside the cylinder, human-sized and unmoving. Maybe it was like the Shadow Men, Imoen thought, someone already dead. She couldn't make out any features below the frozen glass.

The first Lord Bhaal fled to Tyranthraxus long ago, and in the legends was long dead. But the legends probably lied.

Ourawang placed her hand on the control. It was made of translucent glass, and Imoen saw a trickle of blood from Owan's hand seep down through the middle. It was stealing her blood, checking she was a daughter of Bhaal and no impostor. Imoen stared at the preserved figure. Lord Bhaal once was the Warrior Prime, just like Sarevok the Widowmaker, and they said he invented the Darkvoid Device. The same Darkvoid Device wiped out a vast region of space in a single instant, destroying hundreds of living planets and everyone on them.

Hell, Imoen thought, we need any help we can get. Aerie was beside her, muddy and draggled, and lightly touched her arm. Imoen wasn't sure if she was seeking comfort or trying to give it, maybe a mixture of both.

The preservation chamber glowered bright blue, then a warm red. The ice about it slowly melted, trickling down about Imoen's feet. Imoen sniffed to show she wasn't that impressed, and was glad she'd stolen thick boots in Mistport.

There were crackling and shifting noises, and the figure within the preservation chamber slowly became visible as the ice melted. The glass cylinder lowered, and its inhabitant cricked her neck. It was a woman.

She emerged from the ice, shaking her head and cracking her joints. She was dressed like a warrior, with her red hair shaved into a mercenary's scalplock, and carried a long bladed weapon strapped to her back. Her nose had been broken once or twice, and several scars crossed her face. Her dark eyes fixed on Ourawang, piercing her through.

"Greetings, kinswoman. When last I recall, the Emperor Titus was on the Iron Throne. How long have I waited?"

"Nine hundred and forty-something years," Imoen said. "But who are you? Lord Bhaal you're not, unless he had lots of surgery."

"I married him," she said, only addressing Owan. "You could say I'm your stepmother, a few generations removed. My name is Melissan. Tell me, what's changed? How long does it take a disrupter to recharge?"

She crossed the floor of melted ice, moving slowly but surely after her long years preserved.

"Two minutes," Owan said.

Melissan nodded. "It was five in my day. You should never depend on just a disrupter. What of other developments in science and technology?"

"Stymied." This time it was Xzar who spoke up. He was supporting himself with a hand on the wall now, a fanatic's eyes glinting in a bony face. Like a typical Blood addict, he looked like death warmed over. "Experiments and methods are the property of a chosen few. The Empire deliberately slows discoveries, stunting common people's education and making sure only Lionstone and her aristocrats get any new invention. There are even plenty of things we've forgotten since the First Empire. I was wondering about that taxidermy recipe you used on the Shadow Men, myself ..."

She ignored him. "The Empire?" Melissan asked.

"Empress Lionstone is a psychopathic tyrant," Owan said. "She outlawed me, and so I'm trying to return the favour. I have allies, most of them in this room. We need resources, and so I've come here."

"From the looks of you, you're a warrior. I suppose Bhaal's blood hasn't thinned out too much." Melissan eyed Owan like a piece of livestock.

"The Empire knows we're here," Imoen interrupted. Someone had to be the practical one, amidst preserved legends from nine hundred years ago, deranged ex-espers, and destined children of Bhaal. "They will break your shields no matter how strong you think they are, and they'll murder all of us."

The stone castle, she thought, wouldn't be such a bad grave. Better than her friends received. Aerie looked shocked and frightened, but she'd pleaded to die all along.

"How many are after you?" Melissan asked.

"One starcruiser."

"Only one? They don't count you highly, kinswoman." Melissan looked over all of them, at last—Imoen weak and wounded, Keldorn blending into the background, Montaron and Aerie and Adam. She passed over Aerie and Montaron quickly, but stared at Adam as if she was trying hard to understand what he was.

"Do you have a ship of your own? We crash landed fifteen miles from here," Owan said.

"You've earned this." Melissan produced a small box from one of her pouches, and carefully handed it over to Owan. "Bhaal's ring. If worn by anyone too far away from the bloodline, it kills them quite nastily. The ring isn't the ship, but it is your route."

The strange woman strode quickly away, and even Ourawang had to rush to keep up with her. "Wait. What good is a route without a ship?"

Imoen started. Something rumbled beneath her feet. It was probably Imperial mines blowing up below them, or maybe an earthquake from Tyranthraxus' core. The castle shook.

Melissan paused, an inch from the portal, posing for them. "You're standing in my ship."

The castle groaned, screamed, ground gears, and set its fuel aflame. "Hold on," Imoen begged, "the hell!"

Melissan spoke to Bhaal's Last Standing. Her voice brought screens and dials out from the walls. She tapped in a quick code, and Imoen knew she was hearing engines. She was dumbstruck. A stone starship shouldn't be possible, not least with ancient technology. She wasn't sure if she wanted to hold onto a wall, throw up, or hack into the computer system just to show herself this was real.

The giant stone castle blasted up above Tyranthraxus, flattened the nearby vegetation for miles, left the Imperial army far behind, and flew past the starcruiser on the doorstep. Imoen felt, rather than saw, the jump to hyperspace, and then she and the others were far away.

—


	25. Cargo: Xan

He woke up to the smell of antiseptic and urine alongside the itch of disposable bedding, which placed him in the ship's infirmary. This surprised Xan. He'd expected to be in a morgue. Not that he would wake up in that case, and while he supposed it was likely his corpse would be desecrated by the Empire or Shub or assorted aliens in any number of horrific ways, he assumed he would not be in a state to mind it.

His ribs pained him deeply when he breathed, and there was tight pressure on his chest. No doubt that last memory of a knife flung at his chest on that hellish planet was real. He'd thought himself surely doomed.

Xan kept his eyes closed; it gave him a slight chance of marginally better treatment. Superstition was rife that no one should look a telepath in the eye, and so he dared not to so much as meet a non-esper's gaze for fear of painful consequences. The truth was that espers never read minds without orders. Their training covered that in excruciating detail.

He traced over the patterns of their latest doomed mission. The sticky humid heat of a jungle planet, augmented by the pressure of too many maddened minds, human but not quite human, all screaming for blood. Someone twisted their minds as well as their bodies, and left them hateful mockeries of everything they once were. He had touched the outlaws' minds long enough to learn there were two espers among them: one with the power of a god. His mind's brief brush against them was enough for that.

This god of an esper hadn't done anything, in the end, but the pyrokinetic was bad enough. Xan's throat still ached and burned for water. The enemy esper set the jungle on fire around them, leaving nothing to breathe but smoke. Xan acted as he'd been trained, and shielded as many as he could with psionic invisibility, but that helped little when all around them burned. The smell of burning humans and monsters sickened him.

Dynaheir cleared a path in the ground with her disrupter. Even a pyrokinetic couldn't burn a furrow made of glassy soil, and so they'd huddled in the ditch until Xan could muster an illusion.

That plan, of course, failed dismally. He'd the dagger to the chest and the broken ribs to prove it. That woman moved faster than any human had a right to. A child of Bhaal, he'd heard, Bhaal the dreaded aristocratic Family with a taste for blood and fear and killing. Outlawed from the Empire now, and so the prey of all.

He wondered if the Captain had won the day after all, but it was scarcely worth the effort to ask. He heard feet approaching his bedside, and kept his eyes firmly closed and his breathing regular. When he was sure all was silent again except for the medrobot's beeping, he opened his eyes a crack.

The Captain was waiting silently. Her uniform was pressed clean and her hair meticulously braided again, so Xan supposed it had been a while. She looked quite grave.

"Are you well enough to hear? If not, I shall return," she said.

There was no sense in putting off the inevitable unpleasantness of another terrible mission. "Perfectly well, Captain. Except for the hole in my chest."

"I would like you to know that your psionic shield saved many lives," Dynaheir said. "You fought commendably, and took a grievous wound in the course of duty. 'Twas most valiant. Were circumstances otherwise, I would decorate you."

A meaningless aspiration. Espers were property, and no one rewarded property.

"I gave the order to retreat to the starcruiser, and use our firepower against the enemy's shields. It was clear our disrupters were ineffective," Dynaheir said. "But the structure to which the outlaws fled was itself a starship. It escaped our attacks and fled to hyperspace. Our orders are to pursue it."

It was hardly Empire policy to let fugitives escape. The Captain merely stated the obvious. What was less obvious was tracking a vessel that made the jump into hyperspace.

"We are bound for Golgotha. We're required to collect some cargo," Dynaheir said, clipped and formal as if she resented the detour more than she could possibly admit. Her lips tightened and hardened around her teeth. "We have intelligence of where they're bound, and we will capture them."

Her voice only took on that particular icy tone when there were mission casualties. Xan wondered how many in total lay dead on Tyranthraxus' surface. Grieving was not among his own skills. Most marines followed the Church's preaching that creatures like him did not have souls, and cordially hated his existence.

Intelligence—that meant a spy among the outlaws, Xan supposed. His head ached, and he was almost too exhausted to pretend to care.

"Take this." Xan smelt a pungent green ball in Dynaheir's hands: a mess of primitive plants plaited together. "'Tis from my home planet Rashemen. Our plants offer gifts that speed healing."

She left him with the thing clutched in his hand. The bosky smell was alluring, but, Xan thought, that wasn't worth a skin rash. Or something else horrible. Maybe she wanted to poison him and recruit a new esper on Golgotha. Or maybe it would give him bizarre hallucinations, and make him run around the ship with his trousers on his head. So he pushed the herbs into the very back of the drawer by the bedside, folded his arms, and waited for a medic to come by with a bedpan.

—

She had time to breathe now. There was no way the Empire could track them through hyperspace, and so they were safe as long as the stardrive ran.

Imoen sat up in the Last Standing's infirmary, snuggling into a lambskin blanket. The med tech here was well stocked, though way out of date. Luckily Aerie knew something about the old stuff, or maybe unluckily since she was telling Imoen long excited dissertations about medical history texts she'd read.

"I look like a ghost." Imoen sniffed. The stuff Aerie had put on her burns smelt like pine and tea leaves, and painted her dead white all over. "We nearly were ghosts. But we're not, and now we get to play princesses in the castle." The Aloras would've said something like that. She missed them so. "How long do I have to wait for the arm?" Imoen held up her newest sling. Aerie had fed her a nasty-tasting mixture that was supposed to stimulate bone regrowth.

"Weeks," Aerie said. "Maybe faster, if you s-stay out of trouble."

"Me? Troublesome? I'm a saint of sitting still, me!" Imoen said. She'd brought a faint smile to Aerie's face. "Feeling better now, kiddo? Toldja that hike wasn't so bad."

"D-don't call me that. I said I was probably older than you ..." Aerie flushed. "I'm sorry I slowed you down. I was awful."

Asking her, _So d' you still want to kill yourself_ probably wouldn't help. Or, _So what do you think of all those Imperial marines I burnt to death to save all our lives, Miss Everyone's-A-Filthy-Killer? No need to thank me or anything._ She'd better not, Imoen thought.

"I'm new to this whole esper thing, y'know," Imoen said. "One of my foster dads was one, but he didn't talk about it. I just started setting things on fire, since that creep got inside my head. Our heads. Sorry, he's not worth thinking about. Y' said you had some esper uncle, right?"

"Uncle Quayle. He w-wasn't really my uncle, he adopted me ... or I adopted him," Aerie said. "He rescued me from the circus, from the cage. He discovered I was an esper like him, and he taught me. He taught many others, too. Then Imperial agents raided his circus. We had no warning. He t-told me to run and I obeyed him. I should have stayed."

Imoen cupped her bandaged hand below Aerie's. The girl wasn't the only one with a tragic tale or two. "What'd he teach you?"

Aerie blinked, and flung her head back like she was at least trying to throw off her miseries. "He s-started with relaxing. I used to think of star maps. Something that's easy to picture, and very p-peaceful."

"Okay." Imoen hummed to herself. Peace kind of wasn't her thing. A nice shiny circuit-board, maybe, like the one she'd learnt on with Dan Winthrop. Connect the wires just right, and the power illuminated her glowing pink bulb. Simple, but you needed the basics before you started hacking into crystal matrices. She made a board for ol' Gorion that lit up when he passed his metal pen through the circut.

 _That's good_ , Aerie said, and Imoen kept back the yelp from hearing the girl in her head. Aerie felt nice and fluffy, and it wasn't the first time they were linked. _Your esp is a part of you. Let it merge with your inner peace._

It was hard to think back rather than talk back. _What, I set my circuit board on fire? Took me hours to make my best one!_

 _Well ... maybe something different._ Aerie laughed softly. _You don't have to set things on fire to have happy memories._

 _Yeah, but it's fun_ , Imoen told her. Her burns didn't hurt with the cold stuff on them, and she wasn't going to be afraid. _A little one? Can I?_ She remembered the pink lightbulb Winthrop bought her especially. She pictured fire in the air, just a small one, lighting rather than burning. She screwed her eyes up in concentration, and kept them closed.

 _You can look now._

Two small fires, bright blue—she was sorry they weren't pink—danced around each other, neither of them bigger than an earring. Pretty rather than dangerous, and fun too.

 _You learn fast_ , Aerie told her.

Imoen turned her attention to a stray scrap of old paper on the medicine chest. She thought—

"X marks the spot," she said, and burnt a crooked mark for the first move of a tic-tac-toe game.

Aerie laughed readily enough, sitting by her side. They'd played a while, beyond when Imoen slipped over to using a pen rather than her tired brain. She was exhausted, but was having way too much fun. "Best twenty-nine out of fifty-nine?" Imoen teased, and held back a yawn.

"This is nice," Aerie said, letting Imoen lay her head on her shoulder. "I n-never really had a girlfriend before."

 _And most people in the Empire don't exactly approve of the way I have girlfriends, kiddo,_ Imoen thought, privately this time.

"I thought everyone thought I was an ugly freak," Aerie said. "Some people did think it. I had shelter, and work to do in the underground, but after Uncle Quayle there was no one close. And, in s-spite of all the bad things—I'm glad I met you and Owan."

Imoen hadn't meant to yawn. It slipped out. She muttered something about liking her too.

"You n-need to rest," Aerie said. "I s-should go too. I need to ... I've been putting it off."

Imoen settled down on the freshly made bed and drew in a deep breath. Yeah, she hadn't slept properly since—probably before she was captured by the Empire. Yep. Out like a light in a moment. She let everything vanish away and the warm mattress hold her close.

—

In a long career as professional rebel, Keldorn learnt the hard way you couldn't trust people. Fight for them, but never believe they won't turn on you for the sake of their lives or their children's lives or a little extra cash.

Convenient nine-hundred-year-old apparitions fell into that territory for him. Keldorn took a sip from his hip flask, feeling his hand shake involuntarily as he lifted it.

Melissan moved like a killer, not so different to her relative Ourawang. Both mercenaries, both working on getting along together like two wary tomcats in an alleyway, sharing tasks on the Last Standing's bridge.

"The Emperor turned on us," Melissan said. "We were Outlawed, like you, with nowhere to run. Bhaal asked me to accept the preservation chamber, where I could wait until the Empire fell low enough to be toppled. And I can guess his destination."

"We know about the Darkvoid Device," Keldorn said. "It wiped out thousands of suns and hundreds of living worlds in an instant. I'm told Lord Bhaal built it."

Melissan faced him, with the look of a mercenary who didn't care at all about the cost in collateral damage. "We were the Emperor Titus' tools," she said. "Man proposes; the Empire disposes. Bhaal created the Darkvoid Device on the Emperor's orders, and when it was done he was outlawed for attaining too much power. It is our greatest regret of all that we did."

The Empire could not be allowed to hear of this. Lionstone would tear the galaxy inside out if she thought she had the slightest chance of laying hands on the legendary Darkvoid Device, and if she found it she would destroy everything in range just because she could.

"You were just obeying orders. Not an original reason," Keldorn said. "If the Device still exists, then I will never touch it. Do you intend to take it?"

"Not after the first encounter," Melissan said. "Never again."

"And you will prevent anyone else from taking it," Keldorn said, and he was surprised at the strength in his voice.

Melissan shook her head, an almost playful smile on her lips. "The Device was one-use only."

"Then where is this place?" Owan studied the star map. The projection followed her right hand, the one with the heavy black and gold Family ring.

"A planet called the Wolfling World," Melissan answered, and Adam leaned over the map with eager, covetous inhuman eyes.

"I knew it," he said. His triumph was palpable through his rasping inhuman voice. "The Empire destroyed us, and with us our navigation charts and instruments. This is lost Haden, no matter what you call it. Where the Tomb of the Sleepers lies waiting for me to awaken my brethren. We will owe you a debt, child of Bhaal."

Keldorn had seen the way Melissan stared at Adam, her eyes puzzled and curious, showing much more interest in him than Montaron's or Aerie's gengineering. "You are an augmented man," she said. "How many of your kind are there? In my time, such things were barely in development."

"I am the last free Hadenman. We were the official Enemies of Humanity, once," Adam said. "We have men, weapons, and technology still beyond the Empire. Keldorn Firecam should remember the battles I fought by his side. This time, we will not lose the war."

A chilling resolution. Of course Ourawang would accept his alliance; there was no choice. Keldorn tried to think backward before the mind techs got their hands inside his head, but he couldn't remember a Hadenman in the rebellion at all. He tried at least to stand up straight. He noticed his hands were still blackened with smoke from the fire in the woods.

"Hello." It was a loud voice that seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere at the same time, and Keldorn spun around and reached for his sword before he knew what he was doing. "Darling, did you miss me?"

It was Owan's AI, installed in Melissan's ship. He should have known it. Montaron emerged from a narrow bolthole the next moment, wiping greasy hands on his trousers.

"Not for long enough," Owan returned cheerfully.

"You wouldn't believe this ancient place. Cobwebby, cramped, and charmless. I need more than a mouse's hole to thrive, Owan," Turandot said. "Some of these ancient rusty connectors—ugh! But having a contortionist around to fix me up was tremendously helpful. Rubbing oil into all my hard-to-reach places, that sort of thing ..."

Melissan raised an eyebrow. "So this is your machine. I don't think we were even close to artificial intelligence, back then. And now I'm told that a bunch of rogue AIs ran off to become the latest Enemies of Humanity?"

"We'll tell you about Shub later. Are you clear for navigation and hyperspace jumps, Turandot?" Owan said. "Knew it. Suddenly I feel the need for a good spar." She walked purposefully toward Montaron. "I noticed," she said, "when it came to real trouble, you dropped Aerie and ran for your own useless hide. We don't do that, here."

"I fought as much as anyone, more than most!" Montaron argued back. He'd been a petty thug on Golgotha, they said, and Keldorn would have guessed as much without being told. But he had fought on Tyranthaxus while Keldorn ran. "Ye can't expect people to stand there and die for dead weight," Montaron said.

"Aerie pulled more than her weight many times. Can you say the same?" Owan said. They had started a dance of sorts, a dog's pacing about a fighting ring, acutely aware of each other.

"Like hell I can! She was heavy after the first mile I trod, and what thanks for that? You want me to fling myself in front of disrupter blasts so idiots don't have to die alone?"

"Children ..." Turandot chimed in, with a theatrical, ineffective sigh. They didn't listen.

"Pull one more trick like that against a companion and I'll throw you out the airlock," Owan said.

"Leave me to do the dirty work, and only then make your threats. Thought ye were stupid the first time I saw you, wearing your birthday suit." She'd made Montaron lose his temper and he leered viciously up at her.

"They're not threats, they're promises. Get to the training room, next corridor over," Owan said.

"Don't expect me to go light on you!" Montaron boasted.

Owan wore a predatory, death's head grin. "I hope not."

—

Aerie walked past Montaron on her way. He had a black eye and a very battered face, but something strangely satisfied glinted in his pupils and he refused help. She studied her map of Bhaal's Last Standing and its teleports, already much criss-crossed by scribbled marks. Imoen was asleep, and she had a reason to play hide-and-seek.

Xzar's losses were her fault, and the guilt ate at Aerie along with her fear of him. She crippled him, cut him away from his esp and other things. She dreaded seeing him again, but someone had to do it. He had crawled away into an attic in the Last Standing, lying on the stone floor.

Owan was there with him; which was perhaps strange, but it showed she was concerned for everyone in her group. She was sweating as if she'd just exercised.

"You fight pretty well. Much better than I expected for an esper," she said.

"Blame it on the Blood." Xzar waved a long-fingered hand in the air. "Invigorating, refreshing, and cures any physical ills, until Harlequin expires at the end of the comedy."

"When did you learn to use a blade?" This was, Aerie thought, probably how Owan always dealt with small talk.

"When I escaped, of course. Espers aren't allowed to fight, so as soon as I could I found someone in the underground and made him teach everything he knew. Delightful times; raids on the Empire almost every morning; and study materials to take back for after."

Aerie didn't like that description, 'made him'. Or Xzar's description of what he used to do. "Have you taken any more of the Blood?" she asked.

"You think I'd not hoard the thin thread between mobility and inert palsy? No—plenty left. The sensations of its dying effects are hardly pleasant, but the worst are already gone." He lifted a hand and watched it shake with a scientist's detached interest. "Do you have nib and pad to scribe it?"

"I d-did this to you," Aerie said. She came to Xzar's side. His eyes didn't waver from her face, green cat's eyes drawing her in. "It was me, not the Mater Mundi who made me. If I could take it back, I would. I'm sorry."

"Don't be. You were magnificent," he said simply. She flushed, against her will, for she hated most of what she had done.

"Perhaps I can at least ease some effects. L-let me try," Aerie said. She didn't want to try to reach his mind again, but she wanted to want to. She closed her eyes, feeling Owan watch them.

Xzar's mind was a clamouring storm, flashing with poisonous green amidst black thread. Losing his esp hadn't changed him. Strange images flew through the top of his mind, and she couldn't start to understand.

She saw shelled snails sitting on high rocks in the sun, leaking ribbons of purple dye from their bellies while the ocean around them was heavy with blood and waste.

One great blank eye hung above them, framed by darkness, round and unblinking and watching their every move like a spy. One eye. A-one-eye. Words flew like knives around her, a deadly cloud of homophones and synonyms.

Aerie tried to go deeper, and saw a ruined building, dust and stone rubble and broken pipes. It had been destroyed by a grenade, or a polter. Xzar was in the centre of the ruins, and he laughed at the sight. Fragile heaps lay in the remains, coated with fine grey dust. They were people. He looked at them as if they were puppets, cardboard skeletons jerked along by flashing nerves like wires. It was complicated—he understood how a dead brain's signals could move tendon and ligament and muscle, how to spark false light in a corpse's eyes and set it against its living friends—but in the end he saw people as things, and Aerie was sickened enough to withdraw.

She stepped back, rubbing her hands together as if she could wash them that way.

"Here there be dragons. Hie thou hither by dragons," Xzar said. In the real world, he lay on a pallet, covered in his Mistworld cloak and almost helpless. "I know what you were doing. I can't feel it any more. A blind leper doesn't know where the carrion birds eat his fingers. But I still see you." He'd forgotten all about Ourawang, Aerie thought; she hated the wondering way he fixed his eyes on her. "You carry your wings with you when you stand, and when you balance and think outside a cage."

"Montaron's right about you," Owan said, "you're utterly mad. I can't believe the Empire let you live."

It broke the tension. Xzar laughed madly, his shoulders shaking. "Kill espers? We wouldn't mind if they killed espers! Do you know how long esp-blockers get to live? Fourscore and more, even over a hundred."

"Esp-blockers are alive," Aerie said. "Espers who d-don't obey, or who just make up the numbers the Empire wants. They put their brains in a box, cut off from all sensations, and they're still alive."

"I didn't know," Owan said, looking blankly disturbed as she began to understand what that meant.

"Other espers are tortured, given pain conditioning to obey the Empire at all times," Aerie said. "M-most people don't know. Or they don't want to think about it. But now ... you're defying the Empire."

"It needs defying," Owan said. She'd always had strength, a strength Aerie wanted to lean on; she killed people for a profession, but she'd turned it into fighting for what was right. "What did you see of the Empire conditions for espers, Xzar?"

"I don't know. I wasn't an Empire esper. There's a secret aristocratic conspiracy. They think all the Empire's problems boil down to the way they're granted insufficient power, wealth, and territory. Did they ever tell you about it, Bhaal's daughter?" Xzar asked, a devilish gleam in his lidded eyes.

"Wasn't on the mailing list," Owan said. "Should I be worried about them?"

"No. They're exactly as imbecilic as their raison d'etre," Xzar said. "They collected and bred an assembly of powerful minds in a secret mansion, and instead of the infinite potential used us in petty ways."

"I know what aristocrats are like. What they did to you was wrong, and I won't allow such things to continue," Ourawang promised.

Xzar rolled his eyes, laughing again as if she were making a joke. "Don't fret. Aristocrats are much softer than the Empire; their insides squish better. They treated me well—you see, not an esp-blocker at all."

"What did they do to you? Kept you locked up?" Owan said. She was the sort of person who'd look for specific stories, one person's tale that could give a reason to fight.

Xzar ostentatiously yawned. "I'm tired, no Scheherazade, and disinclined to give the misery you want. They-were-very-kind-to-me-since-my-mother-has-a-protector. You should kill them all anyway, since they'll support the rebellion like headlice support murderous combs. Leave me alone. Your deltoids are asymmetrical. Aerie can stay, if she likes."

"You're lying," Aerie said, resenting Xzar as much as ever and finally finding a clear falsehood in his incoherence. "They whipped you. Among other things."

She'd treated him when he was unconscious from the esper plague; could even roughly guess how old he'd been at the time. She'd seen too many similar scars, on other espers.

She didn't expect him to look so betrayed. "I asked you not to touch me." For once he was quiet and serious, and he actually looked hurt. Aerie took a step back.

"I l-looked after you. Someone had to. Someone _still_ has to," she said. "I'm sorry."

 _He's here only because you asked_ , Owan was thinking.

 _I know_ , Aerie said in her mind, and Ourawang's chin jerked up. There was no use denying the bond formed between them in the Mater Mundi's fire, and Aerie could not help wondering what else she and Owan and Imoen could do together.

 _Hell, this is weird. I have to guess whether you're getting me, and I think of a lot of other stuff too._ Ourawang had an active undermind, brutal memories and impulses clustered together that Aerie didn't want to get into. _I didn't think much of espers before, but since Imoen's one I figure I have to understand. Maybe the mad guy isn't a good example?_

 _He really was a terrorist_ , Aerie told her. And Ourawang, who'd kill for the sake of honour or money or duty or protecting esper children but knew where she stood on that one, understood.

"Melissan had food as well as medicine in stasis," Aerie said aloud. "I b-brought these painkillers." She set them down, not getting too close to the madman she'd damaged. "I'm going to cook something, too."

Owan thought about her stomach for the first time in a while, and it rumbled. "Can't do any harm," she said.

—


	26. Enter the Wolfling: Ourawang

"I wish I was dead," Owan said. She had no idea how Aerie could manage reconstituted eggs that were runny and burnt at the same time.

Imoen kicked her under the table. "Don't, you'll hurt her feelings." Owan noticed that Imoen was artistically moving around the lumps and goo on her plate to make it look like she'd eaten, and every so often smuggled pieces into the disposal unit with her good hand. Aerie bustled around cheerfully in a flower-print apron, and Owan amused herself by wondering how the apron made its way into the Last Standing's arsenal of weapons and equipment in storage. She couldn't imagine long-ago Bhaal brooding over pancakes on a stove or turning on the blades of a mixer for chocolate cake.

Keldorn and Melissan, old campaign veterans, stoically made their way through second helpings.

"Don't be a barbarian, Monty," Turandot complained, "you can't say thousand-year-old wine tastes like piss and mud. At least, not in decent company."

Ourawang noticed Montaron wasn't drinking much; careful, as he should've been. They were close to the Wolfling World, the Tomb of the Hadenmen, and whatever else lay there. Important to keep your wits about you.

Owan took a dram of the wine herself, just to wash away the taste of the awful breakfast. It might've been good wine once, nine hundred years ago.

Adam paced the room as if he couldn't bear to sit, not with his goal so near. He promised to awaken the Sleepers from their tomb so they would resume their war against the Empire, and Owan didn't doubt that promise.

Melissan was a different story, and she'd stayed vague on what she offered in the Wolfling World no matter how Owan pressed her. She said an old friend of hers lived there, and Owan ought to follow in Bhaal's footsteps; any more than that, she said, would be better explained by doing than talking.

Owan studied Keldorn, who was carefully scraping his plate clean. Legendary Keldorn Firecam. Something of a hero of hers, once. He'd really fought most of the battles that he was given the credit for, and used small groups of rebels to give the entire Empire pause. He bent over his plate as if he were afraid of spilling the food on his clothes, and brought his spoon quickly to his mouth so his hand didn't have time to shake. Owan thought, or hoped, that he wasn't as broken as he said he was. In some way Keldorn's features seemed to have sharpened since she'd first met the shuffling shapeless janitor, giving back the strong lines of his nose and jawbones.

Turandot coughed obtrusively. "We're nearing the Wolfling World," she announced, all but singing the words. Owan stood, and watched it appear across the viewscreen.

It was a dead world, covered in ice to a depth of miles. The orbit was knocked awry by some catastrophe, and it no longer received warmth from the sun. It wasn't possible to pierce the frozen surface by any normal methods, but the Last Standing carried the coordinates of another transfer portal.

"I want to go directly to the tomb of my brethren," Adam rasped. "Is there no portal there?"

"There's not. Besides, it would be rude to bypass my friend." Melissan's smile had no humour in it.

"I'd like to see for myself." Adam's hand manifested a pair of wires.

"As you like," she said.

The Hadenman's unnatural green eyes focused inward, as he probed and pierced the Last Standing's systems. He seemed to believe Melissan, after a moment had passed, and took a place at the back of the group. Ourawang would have almost thought he was nervous.

Montaron was impatient, fidgeting with his foot and glaring suspiciously at the transfer portal. Imoen was quiet, standing next to Aerie. There was eerie singing.

"Lord Bane, Lord Bhaal, Lord Myrkul

"Were the finest lords you'd see.

"Lords Myrkul, Bane, and Bhaal

"Became the Dead Lords Three.

Xzar had regained his manic energy, constantly twitching from his latest Blood hit, shifting from one foot to the other while he sang. Owan grimaced.

"Lord Myrkul was a strange pale lord

"Far from his form his dread soul soared."

The transfer portal activated incredibly smoothly. Owan's footsteps echoed down another stone hall, built this time with black decaying rock. They were deep under the Wolfling World's surface, far below the ice. Xzar's singing echoed in the bare passageway.

"Lord Bane became the fear of men

"He built himself in twain again.

"Beware, beware the Lord of Bhaal—"

"No singing." Adam stood him down, saying what everyone else was thinking. The Hadenman was intimidating by any standards. Xzar looked almost normal without the writhing tattoos on his face, and like a toothpick next to Adam. Of course, there was also his constant twitching, and the unhinged look in his eyes.

"What's wrong with this song?" Xzar protested. "It's an old one. Every aristocrat's child knows it."

"You ain't an aristocrat." Montaron pushed Xzar forward.

"Couldn't be less so! My father was a test tube and my mother an esper. It's all from digging into other people's minds. Owan, have you heard it?

"Bhaal, worms feast on bitter bile and gall,

"Of his children brought up to—"

His accent was much more aristocratic than Owan's own. "Never," she said. _And who the hell was Lord Myrkul?_ she thought. Bane, Bane, the Hadenman—she knew that name; it was the Hadenmen's battlecry. Did her ancestor Bhaal once walk with Hadenmen? Maybe it was all a folk tale. She scraped a hand along the wall and saw it covered in moss.

"How is this powered?" she demanded from Melissan. They were breathing air, and now there were plants growing inside this dead world.

"There's a power source. A little like that new stardrive you mentioned," Melissan said.

"Alien?" Owan asked. The moss had started to spread into vines, green strings eroding small tunnels in the stones and destroying them little by little. There was even a light at the end of the tunnel, a steadily pulsing orange like a dying sun. Heavy scents began to ripen in the air, coriander and cilantro and honey and citron.

Aerie lifted her head as the passage widened into a forest. She thought there must be a roof over it, somewhere, a barrier before the dead ice above, but the trees were too tall and the canopies too wide to tell. Fir needles crunched under her feet. Insects buzzed, and caterpillar coccoons nestled between thick bark. The spreading trunks and roots carried the weight of centuries, thicker than a grown avariel's wingspan. It had been a long time since Aerie had moved through anything like this place, spreading plants everywhere her eye could see. But this forest was nothing like Faenya-Dail, without the clear open sky and jagged heights and depths that made Aerie's home beautiful. It spoke to something older in her, she thought, a savage spark of humanity that existed long before her ancestors changed themselves. The woods are dark and close and deep, where the wild things wait. There's bloodstained teeth and a howl lurking in that shadow. Lay a trail of white stones, or you'll not live to find your way out again.

The most unnerving thing about it was the way the light didn't come from any source whatsoever. Owan pointed it out aloud, as if she wasn't even scared of what might hear her.

The bees were black, here. Aerie stared at a large one, its wings moving madly. Life was different on each planet; the Empire liked to terraform so many planets with their own familiar species, but the native adaptations still thrust their way through. But it wasn't at all certain that any of this was natural at all.

Aerie stumbled on a tree root. Her hand scraped past sap as she fell. She didn't notice Xzar reaching out to help her up, because she saw what lay beyond that tree. She screamed.

"It's dead," Montaron said. He dared to poke a sword toward the beast's eye. The glassy eyes looked real, and the fanged mouth was open as if it was in the middle of snapping up prey. It was covered in dark brown fur, and had a long lupine muzzle. Most of it wasn't even there, but the head mounted on a stick was terrifyingly large. Here there were wolves.

Aerie stumbled on, past more of them. More stuffed wolves, lying in the forest as if they were about to wake up and hunt. Maybe they'd been under stasis too. She shuddered and whirled from one to the next, not sure why she was afraid. She was no good at walking on unsteady ground, and tripped again. Xzar steadied her, his fingers clutched around her sleeve. He returned a wolf's wide grin to a severed head, and reached out a hand to grab the ear.

"Don't do that." Melissan slapped him down. "He's nearby, and he gets touchy."

Aerie walked behind Imoen, and stopped when she stopped. In a clearing was a huge shape she would have sworn wasn't there before. Another wolf, a living one, standing two-legged and upright, broader than Adam and taller than Xzar. The huge tree he stood by looked fragile next to him. Only Melissan dared to walk forward.

"It's been a long time," she said.

"What gave you the right to interrupt my peace?" The voice was low and measured, smooth and burred like wild honey.

The wolf was a man and the man was a wolf. The dead wolves had looked too fearsome to be sapient, but Aerie could see the truth now. As they approached she could see his eyes, human and limpid and gentle, a strange contrast to his ferocious body. Close up, he smelt of patchouli and cannabis.

"Rights aren't given, they're taken," Melissan said. "What have you been doing with yourself, these last nine hundred years?"

"I garden, and tend to my fallen. They're still mounted where you left them," he said.

"So it's as powerful as ever. I expected as much."

"You brought your children here?" The wolf-man's eyes flickered across all of them the same, as if even Owan were lowly and weak.

"We're not her children." Ourawang stepped forward, her shoulders tense and her hand on her sword. "And you are?"

"Cernd here is a Wolfling," Melissan said. "One of the Empire's first attempts at gengineered soldiers, unstoppable killers. They turned out a shade too unstoppable, and so the Empire terminated the project and ordered mercenaries to destroy them all. Only one survived."

"I never read the mind of anyone who'd even heard about Wolflings," said Xzar, shifting quickly from one foot to the other as if he couldn't bear to stay still, not with Blood rushing through him and his own restlessness. "Or not that I remember. They found a way to completely reverse senescence, at least not without cutting your heads off? And even halt the decay of corpses? Can Aerie see what's left of their minds? Questions abound!"

"Ignore him. He's mad," Melissan said, echoing everyone else's thoughts.

Aerie reached out, cautiously, to read Cernd's mind. Not because Xzar suggested it; it was because Uncle Quayle taught her to use her powers when she needed to. The Wolfling's emotions were calm, but it was the calm of careful discipline rather than innocence. Beyond that, Cernd felt like a steel wall. He was even more impossible to read than Adam, private and shielded. He knew what she was doing, and gave her a look. There was no malice in him, but his calm dignity was terrifying. Aerie stopped as if she'd been caught with her hand in the biscuit jar.

"Do these children know you've brought them here to be murdered?" Cernd asked, his voice neither raised or lowered.

"I have faith in them," Melissan said. "They found me on Tyranthraxus and fought their way this far."

"You've brought them to their death. Or have you forgotten that the Madness Maze birthed the Darkvoid Device, Melissan?"

"If this can bring out the Darkvoid Device ..." Owan said. She held herself straight, and spoke with the familiar strength Aerie knew. "The Empress would listen to us if she even suspected we had the Device. We are desperate. The Empire is vast and powerful as it was in your time, and it's grown far more corrupt. A tiny number of aristocrats hold power, espers and clones are slaves, and ordinary people fear death and worse if they speak out.

"We'd be as bad as the Empress if we used the Device, and Melissan says that's not possible, anyway. But we need something behind us."

Cernd's voice was still quiet and gentle, but Owan stopped talking when he started. "The Empire has always been that way," he said. "But you don't need to convince me. I'm only a gardener, for the Maze.

"The Madness Maze is an alien artefact, from aeons before the Empire. Before humanity. The Empire never created it, only discovered it. Out of the first humans who went in, a scant few survived. The scientists who created the Wolflings, my kind. Melissan knows how many of us were allowed to survive, afterwards. The Maze tests you, and even if you live, others will see you dead."

A shiver ran up Aerie's spine at the cold words.

"Their cause is just, their hearts pure, and they are resolved to continue," Melissan said.

"Speak for yourself. The odds are crap," Montaron said.

"No one came through while I was in stasis, did they?" Melissan asked.

Cernd looked at her. "Who would find this place, nestled in the heart of the Darkvoid?"

Imoen raised a hand. "The Hadenmen. Adam says they used this world as a base."

"The Maze is, and was, too dangerous to meddle with," Adam snapped. His muscles were coiled into knots, and if Aerie hadn't known better, she'd swear he was sweating and afraid. "Our Tomb is on the other side. We stayed away. No one else knew."

"You're wrong," Ourawang said. Her eyes pitilessly swept across all of them. "Turandot says the Last Standing's sensors have an Imperial starcruiser. The same one from before. They've already caught up. Anyone want to stay behind and welcome the Empire?"

"How—" Adam began.

"We'll answer that later." Owan turned. "Let's go."

They walked through the last Wolfling's garden, behind Melissan, through the forest's depths. The light seemed dimmer, and the trees darker. The Madness Maze, an alien artefact that created the Darkvoid Device, death to a thousand suns. Lord Bhaal went through, long ago, but what happened to him wasn't really clear. They could see the Madness Maze now, a vast structure beyond the forest, at first looking like just high steel walls. Then it started to resolve into subtle narrow overlapping passages, as intricate as the human brain. Aerie brushed away a low-hanging branch, her fingers catching on the thorns, and met another's hand, helping her. Xzar was smiling.

"I don't understand you," she said. "You lost everything. Your esp was part of you, all your life, and I took it from you. You need the Blood to be here. I lost my wings and I—I don't mind if the Maze, or the Empire, lets me die. How can you be happy?"

"Some things we both understand." Xzar looked ahead at the Maze, grinning widely as if it were only an interesting puzzle to him. "Curiosity. A sense of wonder. You've seen espers fly and walked on two lost planets."

"Or else—you could go back," Aerie said. "You're human now, not an esper, not property. People wouldn't hate you any more. You could live like a normal person," she babbled.

"My face has changed," he said dryly, looking down into her eyes with bare skin rather than bizarre black designs criss-crossing him, "but I put a lot of effort into my criminal record. Making a splash in the holos. And now I want to know what happens next."

The Maze had approached unexpectedly quickly, steel-like walls twelve feet high, shining and shimmering with a light all their own. Aerie's heart beat quickly. The forest abruptly stopped next to the steel walls, like a dissector's knife had cut through the planet. She thought of Irenicus, and then Xzar. She wondered exactly how the Maze had killed everyone else.

They all looked at each other, but there was nothing more to say. Owan was bravest, Melissan unreadable. Adam and Keldorn were afraid, and Imoen and Montaron already on the lookout for hidden traps. They crossed over from the wood to the Madness Maze, and there was only silence.

—


	27. Madness Maze

_It's how Bhaal gained power, a long time ago._ The silver walls of the Maze looked like they should show Owan her reflection, but there was no colour or form there. Her footfalls made no sound.

She'd walked in behind Melissan, her ancestress of sorts, next to Imoen, but she couldn't see any of her companions now. They'd gone their separate ways, in the narrow complicated passageways folded over each other like tiny blood vessels in a beating heart.

She subvocalised to Turandot, expecting her AI to answer back as usual, but there was no response. It seemed nothing and no one was near.

Owan walked the Madness Maze. She remembered where she'd come from. Her father stayed far away from her, but paid for her to be trained to fight, once he found out she had the boost. She didn't know, now, what her life would have been without it.

 _Probably married and pregnant by now, on some backwater planet, running a dusty wind farm with a bunch of children underfoot._

Most who inherited the boost died young, and those who didn't have it were worthless to the line. Only the lucky ones used it to their full potential. Bhaal's bastard children, vying for the right to inherit.

The boost became her reason for living. She was shuttled from place to place, planet to planet, with anyone who didn't mind training a bastard daughter. She slashed open her own wrist and placed it against Imoen's, swearing to be sisters, for the blood of the covenant is stronger than the water of the womb. Now she had time to wonder about why and how a pair of ageing rebels, Gorion and Dan, took her in, but she'd never get answers from the dead.

She became a mercenary, and fought when there was money in it, though she told herself she had a code of honour of sorts.

 _You began a rebel uprising out of petty spite_ , an inner voice breathed to her. _You'd never have fought the Empress if she hadn't Outlawed you first._

"Maybe that's true," Owan said aloud, "but I'm fighting for the right side now."

 _You've chosen your companions based on how useful they are to you and not their welfare_ , the same voice accused her. Owan thought uncomfortably of Keldorn Firecam, who hadn't wanted to be dragged out of his retirement so she could make use of his name. But there was still some strength in him, she thought, and she wanted to treat him fairly as a warrior.

A mercenary had to make hard choices. You swore responsibility for yourself, and if the luck of the battle went against your companions so be it. You didn't abandon them, but neither was there comradeship. She was still feeling her way forward with this motley group, trying to keep them together, protect them, and lead them in the fight. At least she could count on Imoen.

 _You'll drive forward with a sword in hand, overthrow the Empire, and when it's over you'll die alone, with nothing you ever really wanted_ , the child esper lisped at her.

She'd been ready to kill Dradeel for the sake of the esper children, lying wasted in filthy cots. She'd been wrong then, but there were some matters she could not abide in her sight. She would avenge their deaths at the hands of the Empire, if nothing else. The prophecy didn't matter. Precognitions were slippery at the best of times, and if she destroyed the Empire she'd have what she wanted.

Owan looked over her flaws and accepted them. The Madness Maze ground her down to her component parts, and stripped away her delusions. She faced what she was as if in a mirror, and refused to look away. She'd seen the black rotten heart of the Empire too clearly now, and she would not ignore it again.

She was a warrior, in the end, and she found herself holding to that truth. The Maze took that centre and built on it, reshaping her like a sword. The slag was discarded, and the sharp edges polished until they shone like the sun. She stepped out of the Maze into cool air, feeling it harsh against her face, and opened her eyes as if she'd been scrubbed clean inside and out.

—

Keldorn could smell the Hadenman's fear as he entered the Maze. And so what choice did he have, but to be afraid too? An old broken man, past any ability to fight, who made others fight and die for him.

He remembered the battle on Cold Rock as he walked through the Madness Maze. It was a hellish time on a hardscrabble world, dust in the morning and dust at night and frozen winds carrying dust with them. On Cold Rock you couldn't get away from the dust. The local rebels asked him to stand with them, and he'd seen a chance to win on a small world the Empire didn't really care about. But he was wrong, badly wrong. The Imperial forces were lying in wait for them, and crushed them like a boot stamping on a beetle.

In the last battle on Cold Rock, men fought and died to give him a chance to get away. Imoen Winthrop accused him about Gorion the polter, and she was right. Finer men than he wasted their lives, and for no reason. Keldorn was captured while escaping the planet anyway, and then the Imperial interrogators broke him. More friends died to save him from a show trial and public execution, and then they left him alone on Mistworld once they knew he was useless.

Keldorn picked up the flask on his belt, and in the Madness Maze took a long drink. He couldn't handle alcohol any more, or much of anything else, but in the flask were battle drugs. He'd survived so far only by poisoning himself with them.

They tasted terrible, much worse than usual, as if the Maze blew his digestion all to hell. Without them, he'd be even less the man he used to be.

 _Lady Maria, Leona, Vesper_. It was such a long time since he'd been happy. He had no time to spend on his family when he had a rebellion to lead, and eventually he had to leave his wife and daughters behind for good to protect them. He remembered the spun gold of Maria's hair. Keldorn thought he saw his family walking the Maze with him, but they faded away as soon as they appeared.

His children on Mistworld laughed and played and taunted him, standing upright and hale as they'd never done in reality. _You couldn't save us, you old fool. You never even helped us._

Owan took him from Mistworld. But he couldn't resent her. He'd seen her willing to die to defend Mistworld, protective of Keldorn himself on Tyranthraxus. He ran away and she saved him. A warrior to her bones, and maybe even a hero in the making.

"I'm too old. I'm worth nothing," Keldorn said. But somewhere deep inside him, he wouldn't lie down and die. Perhaps it was the thought of what Ourawang expected of him. His hip flask dropped through nerveless hands, and shattered on the silver floor. He walked past it.

The Maze made him see his own weakness. It made him remember why he'd fought against the Empire in the first place, to protect the weak and defend the defenceless. He'd seen the Empire's abuses for the first time when his Family sent him to administer a backwater factory planet. He discovered all the clone workers made hideously ill by chemical washes and the farm labourers' eighteen-hour days of backbreaking labour, and he would not let it stand.

Keldorn Firecam was a rebel, and he'd one last chance to march out. Even if all he could do was lend his name to Owan, he'd offer it.

He took step after step through the Madness Maze, putting his feet forward one at a time.

—

Montaron stared and stared at the gleaming steel walls as if it was a house he was burglaring from, desperately trying to find some spot or shimmer or depression that meant a deadly trap, but it was all completely the same. He'd expected to be blown up or sliced in two the moment he put a foot across the threshold, but nothing happened. So far.

He tried to keep a close eye on Melissan, who was the one who knew the most about this damned place. Conveniently rises up out of stasis and knows everything about everything, and leads them like pigs with rings through their noses to where she wants to go? Montaron knew a bloody scam when he saw it.

The odds were long, and he kept thinking he'd have done better to face the Imperials. He followed Melissan's pistoning buttocks further in, but he guessed too late that was how the damned Maze got you.

Melissan's toned posterior disappeared around a corner, and when Montaron got there he couldn't find a gap in the seamless metal. _Aliens. Fucking aliens._ He was already panicking at the thought of being alone. Couldn't see the Hadenman—and don't think he'd missed Adam's fear at this thing. Nothing was supposed to scare a Hadenman, with their inhuman implants and freakish power. Adam knew something about this, enough to frighten him silly.

Montaron drew his sword and slammed it at the metal. If he'd a disrupter he could shoot this thing down and get out that way.

If he'd had his wits about him, he would've tried for the seams, the weak points, but there weren't any anyway.

His sword wouldn't work, and so he started beating at the Madness Maze with his bare hands. He didn't know how long he'd been at it, but his hands were soaked with his own blood. His knucklebones were white splinters piercing through blood and skin, like Old Ma Bream's red dog-bone soup. The pain struck him in the head first, a blinding headache, and for some time now he hadn't known what he'd done to his body.

"Let me out!" he shouted, and the pain worsened. He hadn't thought it was possible. White-hot needles filled his brain, much worse than the pain of the espers' geas, and his bones cracked and broke against the walls of the Madness Maze.

"Fucking aliens," he said, and thought he was crying. It was going to kill him. He flung his whole body against the wall. It didn't even vibrate. Even the bloodstains he left on it vanished in a moment.

He'd pulp out his own skull against the Madness Maze, and it wouldn't make a damned bit of difference.

 _You like to solve problems by stabbing them, my boy, but sometimes you have to squeeze through another way._ Monty couldn't remember who'd once told him that. He wasn't one for remembrances.

He was a fighter, a thug, tougher than anyone who dared underestimate him. He didn't give up.

The Madness Maze would kill him.

 _I'm also a half-trained contortionist_ , Monty thought. He hated having to do it. He bent in response to the Maze's power. He slipped through, changing, fleeing through smaller and smaller gaps, and the Madness Maze chased him.

—

Aerie was walking between Owan and Imoen, but she lost sight of Ourawang first. She looked for Imoen, trying to lean on her for support, but her friend seemed to flick her a quick grin as she disappeared. A flash of red hair was the last Aerie saw.

Uncle Quayle had a house of mirrors in the circus. People appeared in such funny shapes when they walked through, and when Aerie went through she only looked as strange and silly as everyone else. It made her laugh. It was a good memory. The Madness Maze was strange, but strange things didn't have to be bad.

 _It birthed the Darkvoid Device, which made a thousand suns darken. We saw what happened even on my world, watching the deaths without knowing the cause._

But people should be innocent until you knew for certain otherwise. Maybe there was more to the story. She didn't know everything. This place felt like someone's home to her, long empty, like a hall of mirrors that only needed laughing children and lovers to complete it.

She heard singing, a high full tenor. Xzar looked at her, standing before a silver wall, raising his voice in a strange saga full of quarter-tones. She couldn't understand more than a few of the words, about a conch-shell horn carved from giant's bones ...

He smiled at her, dipped his head, and went his own way. His song echoed for a while, before it was too distant to hear.

The Maze was kinder than it seemed, Aerie thought, remembering the fearsome-looking and softly spoken gardener. She thought of flying, and wondered if something so long left in the dark would want to hear. She remembered one of her mother's songs, an old simple melody about the promise of flight, and for the first time in years she let herself sing. The song harmonised against the echoes of the last melody she'd heard, and then replaced it. It was a tune that had arrived in Faenya-Dail with the first of the avariel, and soared above toil and pain and death.

She was innocent, and the Maze treated her gently. Aerie opened her eyes outside the Maze as if she'd been in a quiet dream.

—

Imoen was a cyberrat, but the Maze was way beyond her. Hell, she hadn't even been able to understand what Aerie said of the new stardrive, let alone this thing. She was out of her depth in tinkering, a new feeling, and one she didn't like one bit. Maybe, people like Aerie and Xzar and even ol' Keldorn had something in their heads that she didn't, but she was quick and fast at what she did.

Even if lately that seemed to be to mess up. Threw a pie at the Empress' face, got the Aloras killed, got captured. Tattled on the rebel underground and let Sarevok the Widowmaker kill them all. She'd never forget that walk through the blackened ruins of the underground, stepping over the bones of her own friends. She infected half Mistworld with the esper plague. Nearly killed her own sister.

But stopping hadn't even crossed her mind, and she walked on. She was closest to the fire inside her, now. _Ol' Gorion, took over your side of the family most._ She smiled, and flares glinted from her teeth. A puff of smoke flew out of her mouth.

She'd been forged by fire, lately, and it turned out that was what she was good at. She wanted something to throw at the Empire, and setting them on fire might just be the best way to prove a point.

She imagined she heard the Aloras' laughter in chorus, gleefully ready to throw a custard pie in Empress Lionstone's face. She failed, her hands on the controls to get them out of there while a cold voice greeted her by name.

She wouldn't let it happen again. Imoen remembered how she joined the rebellion. She was a cyberrat fresh to the game, looking for a circuit group to run with, and her journeys to the Imperial Matrix led her to so many possibilities. There was this one House Roenall corporation who'd sponsored laws against public libraries, and if they left their security gates in such a state of complete failure, surely it wasn't a cyberrat's fault if someone replaced all their file system with cat holograms? And maybe wiped out all the locks on the factory where they kept their clones imprisoned? The prank made the news, and she made her first rebel friends. She freed the Aloras.

And twenty-nine of the clones in that factory were executed. Terminated, as the Empire put it.

Posion coloured Imoen's memories, and she stepped forward blindly. But she kept on moving forward, no matter what. The Maze worked in her, although she only vaguely understood what it did. She was a fire-forged blade, and had been since the beginning.

—


	28. Maze II: Dynaheir

Captain Dynaheir stood on the Darkwind's bridge, watching the second legendary planet in so many terrestrial weeks appear. Her Investigator was at her right hand, and the ship's esper leant against the far wall as if he were trying to disappear into it. Dynaheir didn't blame him. Sarevok the Widowmaker, the Empress' official consort, was not a man to trifle with.

Some people said his story was romantic: the Empress Lionstone found him in a secret place buried deep in the Golgotha palace, lost for a thousand years or so. Lionstone woke Sarevok from his stasis field, probably not with a kiss, and with his fighting talents he rose to become Warrior Prime, loyal only to the Empress. Lately, after he killed most of the Golgotha rebel underground, she married him.

They called him Widowmaker not only for the foes he killed but for the lives of his own men, spent like water. Dynaheir had to keep silence on what she thought of commanders like that, even inside her own head, but Lord Sarevok's appearance so far belied his reputation.

"You will solely command the ship on the way to our destination," he told her at the outset. "Only when we reach planetfall will I assume command. I've no wish to countermand your authority, Captain."

She assented to his order, and along the way he'd kept his word. In person, Lord Sarevok looked almost as impressive as his holos. He was a tall man and as well-muscled as Minsc, bronze-skinned, with fierce yellow eyes like a hawk. He wore his Warrior Prime's jet black armour, his heavy sword on his back and disrupter at his side, and only rarely raised his featureless black helm. He wasn't the only cargo to be picked up on Golgotha; he brought with him a new stardrive, a platoon of his own soldiers, a chain gang of battle espers, and a pack of Wampyr.

Dynaheir hadn't known that any Wampyr still lived, or rather existed. The dead men and women demanded a dark sealed room at the bottom of the ship, and blood substitutes to keep themselves fed.

"You have a good reputation, Captain," the Widowmaker said through his helm, which added an unnerving echo to his voice. "I was impressed by your actions on Unseeli, in eradicating the Ashrai."

Unseeli was a planet full of metal trees, trees that grew exactly the heavy metals the Empire needed for stardrive production. The trees were gengineered, of course, but it hadn't been by either the Empire or the native species. A long-ago remnant of an alien intelligence, like the Grendel. No one knew why they made the forest and then abandoned it.

The Ashrai evolved around the metal trees, cherishing their forest and living as one with it. And when they fought the Empire to protect their land, Dynaheir scorched the planet and killed their entire race.

"A scant few years later, we discovered a new stardrive design that doesn't require those materials," Dynaheir said, alive to the privilege that gave Sarevok and the Darkwind one of the few prototypes. "Had the Empire foreseen this, I should have acted differently."

 _The Ashrai could have kept their trees_ , she thought, lost in a momentary reverie, _and I would not have lost thy friendship ..._

"Planetfall, Captain," the navigation officer announced. The world was covered by ice sheets to a depth of miles, but it was nothing the ship's disrupter cannons and a squad of engineers couldn't pierce in a few hours.

"Lost Haden," Dynaheir murmured. She heard countless stories about the Enemies of Humanity as a child. From lost Haden they came, and in their final defeat the Empire's cyberrats wiped out all knowledge of even the planet's coordinates. Later, during her training, she'd seen the classified footage. The Hadenmen swept in on their golden ships and murdered children and anyone else they considered weak, strapped the living prisoners to a table, and dissected them alive for spare parts.

"I knew it as the Wolfling World," Sarevok corrected her. "Begin the excavation. There's one more thing." He whipped around, and gave instructions to her commnications officer to look for a transfer portal energy signature. There was no question that the Widowmaker knew far more than he told about this place. Likely he or the Empress, or both, had a spy among these rebels.

"I'll need an invasion force at the Hadenmen's entry point," he said. "My lieutenant will take command. Captain, you and I will pass through the transfer portal. Choose ten of your best men, and I'll do the same."

The transfer portal left them in an artificial forest, deep below the planet's surface. The dark green depths weren't too far off Rashemen's wilderness. Dynaheir shook off her memories of home, looking for signs of attack.

She had chosen a mixture of specialists, since Sarevok himself seemed uncertain about what lay ahead. A communications officer, Olamide Oni, who spoke several alien languages and mastered new tongues quickly. Second Lieutenant Alamoudi, an old spacer with greying hair and an intuition that made him survive when others did not. Her Investigator, of course, and Xan for his esper abilities. Tiffany Chan, a young medical officer, fussy and alert. Five marines, all of them under her command at least two years, from young and beardless to old enough to remember Hadenmen.

Dynaheir saw that one of Sarevok's band wore an aristocrat's insignia on his flowing cloak; a yellow and white pomegranate flower, although whether Delryn or De'Arnise or Despana she couldn't tell. Other than that, all the men and women wore the Widowmaker's standard sleek dark costume, which looked a touch too form fitting to be comfortable. He had his pick of Academy graduates and chose the best fighters of the generalation.

"I know those two," Doctor Chan muttered to Alamoudi, pointing out a man and a woman standing next to each other. "They're famous—Slythe and Kristin. They're Arena stars who took on all comers together, a married couple. It's a pity they left before the Masked Gladiator came. I should ask for autographs. I had a poster of Slythe in my bedroom ..."

The woman raised her hackles at that, and bared her filed, pointed teeth. Dynaheir coughed meaningfully.

"Watch for what's of import to our mission," she ordered. They walked in silence after that. Sarevok led them with a purpose in mind, charting a course directly north. They paused at stuffed corpses of wolflike creatures, which showed the inhabitants of this forest did something. Except for insects, the place seemed deserted.

Dynaheir realised she hadn't seen signs of any living creatures larger than insects. Had the wolf creatures eaten everything there was, and then died of hunger?

"You're leading us to our deaths." Xan had grown increasingy jumpy and wild-eyed as they went, and now he'd laid aside all traces of military discipline. "I see it. I've been sensing it all the time we've walked. It's alien to us, it has more than five dimensions, and they're all insane. It knows we're coming, it knows we wouldn't accept the changes. It wants to kill us all. And it will—"

Sarevok stepped swiftly forward to strike him into silence, but Dynaheir stood in front of him. He lowered his hand. "Forgive me," he said, unapologetically. "I should have warned you not to bring an esper. Their sensitivities can't handle a place like this."

"You'll doom us all!" Xan broke in.

"He always insists that our missions will end in disaster," Dynaheir said. "He's not normally this bad. Calm down," she ordered, and Xan knew enough to subside.

He gathered himself and tried again. "In the spirit of professional advice, Captain—and Lord Sarevok—it's my duty to warn you against unnatural alien artefacts out for your life. It's my precognition that you will die if you go further."

He'd managed to unnerve everyone in one fell swoop, except perhaps Sarevok. "Return to the transfer portal, esper," Dynaheir said. She kept her voice steady, and the group's attention rested on her instead. "If you say you're unfit for this, leave."

He bowed his head. Espers were trained not to disobey orders, ever. He turned his back and went.

 _What are the sensor readings?_ Dynaheir subvocalised, back to the ship's AI, Cyclops.

 _Unknown structure in the heart of the planet, Captain_ , the AI replied. _Our measurements of it conflict. You should have a visual impression soon. But the closer you get, the less likely it is you'll receive a communication feed._

 _What's the estimated time for breaking through on the other side?_ she asked.

 _Four more hours._

 _And if we waited that time, would we be able to fire on this structure?_ Destroying things as a first resort was normally the Empire's policy, after all.

Cyclops' tone was uncertain, which was rare but possible in an AI, mimicking humanity. _I suppose. But none of my data fits the parameters. There are things where disrupter beams are not recommended and things where they are. I'm confused, and I'm an AI. So's the whole communications department. Nobody likes this place. How about ..._

The AI's voice in her ear fizzled, and abruptly went out. A few steps later, high shining silver walls appeared before them, cutting into the edge of the forest like a sword. The scope was more vast than Dynaheir had expected; she couldn't see the end of the walls. There were no seams in them, as if they'd been poured onto the planet. She had seen much worse than silver walls. She'd walked past the gleaming coffins on Grendel and faced one of the scarlet unstoppable killers. She fought an alien cocoon from a dying starship that enveloped Unseeli's entire Base and killed every last man, woman, and child. She'd stepped through the ever-burning inferno of the planet Loki, coughing up thick ash even through a hard suit. There was nothing—except for Xan's prediction—that marked this as any more difficult.

Dynaheir tried to reach her ship again, but there was no reply.

She walked alongside the Widowmaker. "I assume this is what the Empress desires," she said. "Is the mission to destroy it?" Something in her craved the idea of leaving this place with all haste and blowing it up from space; a primitive, atavistic fear.

Instead of answering, he faced all the group. "We are few, we are elite, and we have been trusted with this mission." His voice carried, strong as a bass horn calling for battle. "The Empress herself commissioned me, as I have personally selected you. We challenge the hand of death itself, and challenge it unafraid. I have faith in you, for you are the chosen few. I have trust in you, for the weak could not have come this far. You must show strength, the strength of the best of Humanity against aliens and enemies and freaks. You must not turn away from our quest. Today, we change the entire Empire, forever."

'Twas vain and empty rhetoric, though Dynaheir granted that the Empress' consort had some skill in the delivery. What he did not say was how the Empire should be changed, and what the consequences would be.

"Some of you have fought aliens before," she spoke, "and I have no doubt in your training and honour. We swore an oath, and we know full well what we must do. Follow the steps for hostile alien territory, don't take a step forward without clearing the path first, and watch for your comrades. Investigator, take point." The practical orders brought them back from Sarevok's melodramatic aspirations.

Minsc stood before the entrance. There was a gap between the seamless steel walls, like a missing tooth. This artefact was older than the Hadenmen, and probably very much older than Humanity.

"These readings can't be correct, Captain," Olamide Oni said, bent over the equipment. "I'm having trouble measuring at all. What I've got says it's bigger on the inside than the outside. Alien technology?"

"Or clever architecture," Dynaheir said aside. "Life signs?"

"None detected. The machine has limited range, under these conditions."

The silver walls reminded Dynaheir of the coffins on Grendel, but she told herself the planet's conditions were completely different. Minsc seemed lost, as he always did when there was nothing immediate to fight. He was a different man since his head was caved in on Grendel, defending Dynaheir in that bloody place. He suddenly smiled in her direction, warm and even cheerful on this alien world.

"Enough wasted time. Follow me," Sarevok commanded. "For the Empire."

Dynaheir nodded, and walked into the Maze behind him.

—

There was nothing there, nothing but pale silver walls with no reflections in them. If the outlaws had passed this way, there was no sign of them. Dynaheir couldn't afford to show any fear. Her people kept their cool, so far, and walked in formation. Sarevok's group also managed some semblance of discipline. She realised that cooperation was by far the best choice, and deliberately asked a young man with a scruffy beard on his chin to set up the next measurement stop. Private Benvolio Kahler, recruited directly from the Academy to join the Widowmaker, who'd won strategic simulations previously thought to be impossible.

They couldn't see the entrance of the maze any more. Corridors twisted and turned, compasses whirled, and cut off from the ship's AI it wasn't possible to tell which direction was which. Dynaheir felt as if she were walking through the folds of a human brain.

"The dimensional transcendence indications are increasing, Captain. It looks even bigger on the inside now. And still no life signs," Olamide announced, her greasy hand tracing the pucker in her brow.

Sarevok laughed. It echoed among the silver walls, although no other sounds seemed to. "The Madness Maze cares nothing for your instruments. It defies all human understanding. All that's needed are courage and will. Those who can fight, join me on the other side!"

He was gone in moments, slipped into a side passageway. It was impossible to see where he'd gone. He wasn't the only one. Six men raced after him straight away, including Kahler, although they were going in completely different directions.

"Captain? Their life signs ... this device doesn't know where they are. It doesn't know where we are. I think it's broken ..." Olamide, normally calm and analytical, laughed to herself. Dynaheir stepped over to her.

"Put it down. Put everything but your weapons down," she said. "It's plain the instruments don't work here. Stay together, take the left path in the maze." Everyone knew that was how anyone could wend their way through a maze. "This isn't a test where only the strong survive. We're all trained toward different skills. Follow orders, and I shall protect you."

"It wasn't like that in Investigator training," Minsc said. Dynaheir noticed with horror that he was staring glassily at one wall. "Only the strong are allowed to survive that. There used to be lots of children, and now there's only a few."

" _Minsc_ ," Dynaheir said, and mercifully he looked at her. "Do your duty. Go forward."

The walls were still indistinguishable from each other, but they had a plan. Dynaheir didn't have to look back, leading from the front. She trusted Alamoudi to keep the rear, as the veteran had done so many times before. Minsc walked on, his body solid as granite, and behind him Ifrit Iftikhar, an unarmed combat specialist who'd once pinned down an N'Jarr for three minutes running. Jones and Chan were the least experienced there; but the key was to give newer crew experience, so that they then instructed others. If that experience consisted of walking through an unnerving alien artifact, let it be so.

Dynaheir had to turn back when the screaming started. Doctor Chan leant against a silver wall, and couldn't seem to pull herself away from it. Alamoudi grabbed Chan's hand, but her skin and flesh writhed away from them both. She was being cut to ribbons by invisible swords. She tried to say something, but it dissolved into more screaming. Her flesh and bone alike fell off in thin strips, and what was left of her fell on the ground. Beardless Chiumbo Jones, the youngest marine there, vomited.

Tiffany Chan had served all her active duty on Dynaheir's ship; had patched many crew members back together and survived away missions on Chrysomallus and Atala and Tiger Mountain. She was unquestionably dead. They left her behind.

Then Dynaheir lost another marine. He slipped down the wrong passage, and though they looked, they couldn't find him anywhere. Chiumbo Jones pressed his fists to his head. He was pale.

"I don't feel ..." he managed, and then his head exploded in a cloud of blood and brains. And it was followed by two other men, exactly the same, three heads gone and three bleeding bodies falling to the ground. Iftikhar's long fingers were still curled into a defensive fist.

"Turn back!" Dynaheir yelled. Olamide stared at her.

"Hell is empty ..." she said. Olamide knelt down and threw up her own tongue, which writhed out of her mouth with a stream of dark blood. She looked up in her terror, and other things came cascading out of her: windpipe, intestines, stomach, horribly wet and twisted together. Minsc stood above her, and brought down his sword. It ended the pain.

 _Hell is empty, and all the devils are here._ They ran. They fled down passageways without thinking about it. Lieutenant Alamoudi paused and panted harshly.

"Leave," he said, eyes bulging as he stared at one of the walls, "it's got me."

Dynaheir had never seen a man turn inside out before. Alamoudi's skin moved to the inside of his body, swallowed by still-beating lungs and heart. Blood vessels trembled on the outside of his body, and Dynaheir saw the backs of his eyeballs, pulsing in the middle of his brain. Then the organs folded over themselves even more, and he collapsed into a squishy pile on the floor. She hoped he was dead.

They ran past two of Sarevok's soldiers, the former gladiators Kristin and Slythe. They'd terrified the Arena in their time, and they fought back to back once more against invisible enemies. But as they stepped close to each other, their bodies tangled. Their skin melted over each other, seemingly without their notice, and they became a strange two-headed creature. It still swung its swords around a liquid column of flesh. Then the sword arms melted into each other, and the puddle roiled across the ground.

The aristocrat from Sarevok's band, further on, was still recognisable from his yellow and white cloak. Blood poured out over it, oozing from his eyes and groin, and then the red trails of blood seemed to harden into snakes. He screamed as they bit him.

Dynaheir dropped down, and tried to cover one of the cuts with her hands. Where she touched the man only bled liquid blood, but everywhere else it writhed like a living creature. It was joined by ropes, viscera, organs that vomited up through all his orifices. Intestinal ropes covered his mouth, and cut off his screams. She drove her sword into his heart to end it.

She stepped over a mask of skin on the ground. Dynaheir vaguely recognised the face as young Kahler, and wondered what happened to the rest of him. Two more men lay on the ground beyond him, black marks covering both necks as if they'd strangled each other while blind.

Everyone was dead. Minsc tottered on his feet. He fell to the ground and didn't open his eyes. Only a small bag at his neck moved, pulsing with something living inside it.

 _Get Minsc out of the Maze_ , Dynaheir thought, and all she was crystallised on that goal. He was the last left alive. She seized his collar with one hand, and aimed her disrupter wildly at the Maze.

The silver wall collapsed. There was more beyond it. She aimed more carefully and fired again, dragging her Investigator as she went. She didn't look back to check whether he was still alive or not, but pulled and aimed again and again. She destroyed more and more of the Maze, and didn't give a damn. The shining silver walls collapsed around her, and blindly she thrust forward and forward. With her disrupter empty, she fell to her hands and knees on the ground.

—

Owan drew herself up, blinking at the glare of the ice above. If this was the Madness Maze, it seemed hardly worth the trouble. It was like she'd stepped through a simple door. She couldn't really remember what had happened, so she decided to ignore it.

Something crackled in her implant, and then she winced as Turandot shaped her subvocalising into a shrapnel grenade. " _Owan! Where the hell have you been?_ "

"You're such a nanny goat," Owan subvocalised back. "What was it, five minutes ago? Ten?" She didn't usually lose track of time. But she banished the unease to the back of her mind.

"Six hours," Turandot snapped. "Don't ask me what happened, I don't know either. I'm hiding on the dark side of the planet, commanding the Last Standing. They brought disrupter cannon and a whole engineering squad. They made short work of the ice canopy and found the Hadenmen's entry."

Owan looked around, still dazed. They were all there, as far as she could tell, Imoen on her right and Aerie on her left, Keldorn and Melissan behind. And the giant Wolfling had come back behind them.

"I did not think it possible. Melissan was right," Cernd said. "Of everyone to walk the Maze, tens of thousands who tried—twenty-two survived. Including you."

"Told you the odds were crap. I should've shanked you," Montaron muttered. His fingers itched over his weapons, and he looked down at his own hands as if he were surprised at the sight. "Feels like someone went for the inside of my head with steel wool. But it's sort of fading away. Fucking alien esp."

"I thought I saw visions ... faces from my past, and things that never were. But they're leaving me. I wish they weren't," Keldorn said.

"You sound like the madman over there. Pity he got through." Montaron gave Xzar a familiar, measured glare. "It's called the Madness Maze, so it figures."

"It's mad, I'm mad, it's lucky that our madnesses were convergent," Xzar babbled. "Mostly mad people are mad alone, like all the people in asylums who think they're the real Empress Lionstone. But I think it has more to do with the company you keep. Someone was singing."

"I heard that too," Aerie said, "it was l-like a dream. I think it was a nice one ... I don't remember."

"Feelin' good, kiddo? I'm feeling real good." Imoen beamed, closed her right hand, and then opened it again with a set of tiny throwing daggers nested between her fingers. A very nimble conjuring trick. Her sling was gone.

Adam said nothing. He was breathing heavily below his golden implants, and his eyes still stared at something deep inside himself.

"I waited for this a long time," Melissan said. She looked calmer than any of them, triumphant, already looking outward to the horizon. Then Owan saw exactly what she saw. The Empire came into focus, pinnaces and ground troops who'd already pierced the ice shield, a black mass at the edge of the horizon like a gathering of locusts about to strike.

Adam cursed. "My brethren's tomb. There is no longer any time. I must wake them, before it's too late. Keep your promise." He was off like a shot, running over the horizon, and then Ourawang raced to keep by his side. She wasn't alone.

—


	29. Maze's End: Dynaheir

She'd forgotten where she was, except that her hand was twisted in Minsc's collar. But the man himself wasn't there; they had him on a stretcher nearby.

Dynaheir's AI was back online. "Command the largest pinnace," she subvocalised. Her implant updated her knowledge; she already had enough for her needs. "Fire on the Madness Maze. Destroy it utterly."

She was on land herself, on a bare artificial plain probably made by Hadenmen. Quite far from the Maze now. She watched as one of the pinnaces detached itself from the main forces, aimed, and opened up with all its disrupter cannon at once.

The silver walls of the Maze crumpled like a child's paper toy. The sheets were suddenly fragile, and melted away just as they'd done against her gun. Dynaheir wanted to see a featureless plain, needed to see it gone, and in the standard Empire style the disrupter fire left nothing behind but a smooth glassy wasteland. The pinnace hovered in the sky, its energy spent.

Sarevok the Widowmaker had been by them all the time. His eyes bulged out of his head as he stared.

"You dare!" Bloodlust screamed in his eyes. But he regained his composure the next moment. "You know nothing of what the Maze is. What it was. But now it has served its purpose, perhaps that is acceptable."

"How many of your men returned from it? How many of my crew? You led my men into a deathtrap." The horror of the Maze and her failure were still raw in Dynaheir's mind. She gave into easy impulse.

"Lesser lives are sacrificed for a greater goal. You've done plenty of that in your time," the Widowmaker sneered.

Dynaheir had written countless letters to families: _regret to inform you that your loyal son, know that your husband perished a hero, sorry for your loss as the Empire grieves a brave soldier_. They were always noble and heroic in the condolence notes, even if they'd died screaming slowly and painfully or caught off-guard in a field latrine. She shook her head to clear her brain. "That was your greater goal? Any lovesick teenager with a piece of thread can traverse a maze!" Dynaheir's mind showed her folk stories, red string bound to the horns of a half-man half-bull by a prince in disguise, the labyrinth maze with its terrible secret that haunted human dreams in the mists of eternity. "You did not even allow us to accept the risk."

"You would have refused, considering that you failed the Maze," Sarevok said. "No matter. The Empress requires the escaped rebels. You had better pray they were not all in the Maze you just levelled, for time and space flow differently there. We need two of them alive. The Bhaalchild, and the old red-haired hag." Hatred amplified his voice, and his golden eyes gleamed like a man possessed and driven by demons. "She's escaped me for a long time."

—

Almost close enough for Ourawang and her companions to touch, the disrupter fire blazed across the plain. The Imperial pinnace hovered above the remains of the Madness Maze, a great black craft making a deadly blot on the landscape. They all turned to look. They couldn't help it.

Melissan cursed. "Cernd. Goodbye, old friend." The Wolfling had disappeared from among them, as if he'd simply melted away once they went on. Gone back to his home. "Typical Empire. Destroy something you don't understand."

Owan expected the ship to turn on them immediately, but it didn't. Their group had made it to some cover away from Imperial eyes overhead, into a dead stony valley where it looked like nothing had ever grown.

Adam placed his hand against a seemingly blank rockface, and a hologram shut down. They ran through, into a dank tunnel that smelt like it hadn't been touched for hundreds of years. It eventually widened into a battleground.

Owan looked at the ruined Hadenman city, and realised that what struck her as most inhuman about it was the lack of streetlights. Adam's glowing eyes lit up the path in front of them in the dark. There were no pipes or gutters in the open either, although she could hear distant waters, somewhere far below.

It was a tactically good place. The damage left plenty of places to use for concealment and prepare traps, and take advantage of whatever the Hadenmen had left behind.

Aerie looked at the underground city, drawing her shoulders in, feeling an avariel's instinct against closed spaces underground and a prisoner's fear of a cage. "The buildings were all s-so square," she said. "There's no room for anything to grow." The city still smelt sterile, though so many long years had passed. Smoke and old bloodstains patterned the smooth sealed ground, and buildings split down the middle marked lost battles. "I think ..."

The Maze had left intangible connections on all of Owan's companions, an invisible thread that bound Aerie to everyone present. She reached out beyond that with her esp, searching outwards for other minds as far as her strength allowed. "They're here already," Aerie said. She felt hatred, death, and a large number of minds on battle drugs. She couldn't bear her mind to see more than that.

Owan hustled them, pointing to places below dark overhangs, sheltered by walls of the abandoned city. Adam took one look at her, shook his head, and ran off. Nothing and no one would stop him from the Hadenmen's Tomb. Aerie hid alone under a shadow. She didn't have long to wait.

The Empire tore apart the city's shell with fragment grenades. There was a bright flash of light, then searchlights poured in behind the Imperial troops. Aerie felt another mind reach out to them. The Empire soldiers were trained and conditioned against enemy espers, but in every shield there's a weakness ...

Jonathan. His name was Jonathan; he was eight months out of training and almost as frightened of the battle as Aerie. He was thinking about Dio, his friend two rows ahead, they'd played poker the night before and laughed to death about the seventh king, and to think they could be killed today. Then an alien presence entered into his mind, and he would have screamed in terror if only he could control himself. He felt his hand draw his disrupter against his will, and then he saw himself aim at Dio's head, at all the men in front of him. Tears drenched his cheeks but the voice in his head was merciless. He wept as he swept his disrupter around himself, killing all his comrades in a moment of light and pain. By the time his hand held the disrupter against his own ear and forced his finger on the trigger, he was willing to press it by himself.

Aerie's mind fled back to her body before the man died. Xzar stepped out, joyful at the screams and death and chaos, and a telekinetic storm whirled up around him. His face was covered with writhing black tattoos.

"Esp is back on," he said.

Imoen joined him. "Sarevok the Widowmaker's men are here!" she said, though Aerie would have sworn there was no way she should have heard her speak aloud. Grim death was inside Imoen, and fire came at her whim. "This is for Alora!"

Flames crackled and spread in mass around the Empire soldiers, splitting their ranks and making them scream and duck for cover. Xzar used it as raw material. The blackened corpses rose up, drew their swords, and brutally slaughtered their former companions.

Aerie tried to do what she'd done on Tyranthraxus, send fear at them and make them run and live their lives far away, but these men were resistant to weak esp like hers. She huddled back, afraid, and maybe more than anything else she feared that the Mater Mundi would again kill in her name.

Owan flew into the fray with Melissan beside her. The Imperials' lines were broken and they didn't see them coming through the flames. She slipped into boost, set up her force shield, and cut a swathe through the enemy. She didn't care about the men she slaughtered. Melissan followed her with her double-bladed polearm, steady and vicious. They worked well together.

"His name is Sarevok?" Melissan murmured. They stepped over corpses. "Is it possible he was in stasis?"

"Sarevok the Widowmaker," Owan returned. They fought back to back, fire on either side of them, cutting down Imperial soldiers who tried to rush them. The boost was heady through Owan's veins and she felt herself immortal and unstoppable. "Yeah. They say the Empress woke him from stasis, probably with a kick. Know him?"

"Yes. He must have followed me even to the future, for revenge," Melissan said. Her voice was expressionless, but her polearm spit a black-clad man on it like a lump of pork. "You'll need to kill him. He's another Bhaalchild."

Owan couldn't answer her, for their enemies pressed them now. Her force shield struck sparks against a marine's, and she moved back and forth in a boost-quickened dance.

Montaron followed Bloody Keldorn Firecam to the battle. Nowhere was safe, and his best chance was to take as many of the bastards with him as he could. He heard Owan and Melissan talking about the Widowmaker, though there was a pitched battle around him. It was like he stood next to them, and knew exactly what they did.

Owan's strategy was to draw the Empire into this ruined city, and let them come among the buildings where their numbers were not so great an advantage. Xzar and Imoen broke their lines and they fell into the trap. Fire was at Montaron's back as he followed a marine.

He fingered the old projectile weapon Melissan dug up from storage. Any fool could understand how it worked—send a small ball of metal at top speed into a man's flesh. Weapons like that were redundant even in Melissan's time, dropped for disrupters and force shields. Might as well use a bloody bow and arrow.

Keldorn forgot his whinging long enough to charge. He fought with a lifetime's worth of dirty tricks behind him, even more eye-gouging, biting, and kneeing in the delicates than Monty knew how to do. Montaron found a chance to get in and stab their kneecaps. As soon as a marine's force shield blinked out, he squeezed the gun's trigger. He hadn't expected the force of the recoil and the heat in his hands. The man looked stunned at the weapon and the bleeding holes in his body, and then started to look very dead. _I might get to like these things_ , Montaron thought.

Aerie, hidden, heard the singing begin. Then her ears started bleeding. The Empire brought in battle espers to even the score. Battle espers were many a rebel's worst fear, not only for what they could do but for what was done to them. Brainwashed, tortured, and broken until they knew how to do only one thing: kill on the Empire's orders. These were Sirens. Their voices were living weapons, sending a scream to an impossible pitch, aiming at Imoen and Xzar and catching everyone else in the backlash. Aerie fell to her knees, her hands wrapped around her head.

Imoen was hurt on a level beyond any she'd faced before, for since her own esp awakened, she was more vulnerable to psychic attack. Aerie felt her screaming. Owan fell back, her mind shattered, barely dodging under a sword blade aimed at her head. Keldorn ran, his courage broken, with Montaron behind him.

Xzar's control over the dead men was annihilated, and they fell to the ground like the corpses they were. The Sirens' voices flayed him open as badly as Imoen. But he'd felt this before, and with his esp so recently restored he would not surrender easily. He brought up small, sharp stones from the ground in a telekinetic storm, and flung it at the battle espers. The hurricane around them flensed and tore their flesh, but they'd been long conditioned to accept pain. Their song crushed him.

 _Help me_ , he asked in despair, and Aerie felt it spread along the link the Maze had left. _I don't want to die ..._

Aerie found the heedless, laughing way he killed repellent, and hesitated. Ourawang first made the choice to trust him. _Hell, you're an esper_ , she thought, and lent him what mental reserves she had left. Imoen followed her sister. Even Montaron thought, _I've seen what ye can do when you're inclined, bloody esper—go ahead and end the noise—_

This bond shouldn't be possible between esper and non-esper. Something strange, something new. Aerie joined them, bearing the Sirens' song. She drew them into her mind to protect the others, her mind white-hot with pain and knowing she could not sustain it long. She was blind from it, bleeding from eyes and ears.

Xzar had the chance to think of an idea and the strength to do it. He reached up to the roof of the city, already unstable from the Empire's grenades, and detached another large section of stone. He let it fall.

The Empire trained battle espers to continue despite any pain. They didn't get out of the way.

The Sirens' song stopped, but the ruined Hadenman city was already unstable. It shuddered and shook as if it tried to throw out the violence in its midst. Aerie felt the ground crack and shift under her feet, and then someone grabbed her around the waist. Imoen swung down on a thin, flexible wire she'd taken from somewhere, picked Aerie up, and leapt away from the falling masonry.

There was nowhere to run but the tunnels. Adam raced back through the caves to join them, but he wasn't alone. The Imperial soldiers had staked out the Tomb's entrance. A pack of Wampyr were on him. Aerie knew them by their dead inhuman faces, by their pitiless speed and fury, by the cold ruthless void of their minds. She'd met a Wampyr before, she'd been captured by one, and feared them.

Adam was inhumanly strong, but the Wampyr were just as bad, and there were more of them. He was already bleeding in a dozen places between his metal plates. If he'd still had his disrupter implant, he could have destroyed them, but they came back no matter how he wounded them. His heavy sword sheared a Wampyr's arm off at the shoulder, but the dead man didn't so much as flinch. Another Wampyr flung herself on Adam's back and bit deep into his shoulder, lapping up his blood while he struggled. Then she whipped her other hand into his neck with so much strength that she decapitated him.

The severed head rolled at Aerie's feet. The Wampyr fell on Hadenman blood and feasted on it, devouring what was left of Adam. Aerie saw Adam's eyes rolling frantically, and his mouth still moved soundlessly.

She opened her mind. Something was still there in Adam's decapitated head, desperation and strength of will and the burning need to complete his purpose. Amidst the unreadable binary code and the quickly coming darkness, he left five words. _Blue three seven seven zero._

Then there was nothing. The Wampyr turned on Aerie.

"I don't think so," Imoen said, and raised her flame. Fire was a sure killer of everything that ought to be dead. She didn't stop until the Wampyr gang were all blackened, charred bones. Then Imoen had to draw her sword, and faced one of Sarevok the Widowmaker's men head on.

They were all overwhelmed. Owan was blade to blade with a woman in a Captain's uniform, Melissan against a man in jet armour. A huge man in Investigator's blue roared like a berserker, and Keldorn turned tail and ran. Xzar held off two surviving battle espers, blood dripping from his chin. Imoen showed herself in battle like a rebel hero, going against five with sword in one hand and fire in the other.

No one was paying attention to Aerie. All her companions would be killed. She made herself psionically invisible, hooked Adam's head to her belt, and ran.

 _Blue panel, code three seven seven zero_ , she thought.

Owan had expected to win easily, but this Captain was tough. She was older than Owan, with dark skin and greying hair. Her fighting style was patient and precise, leaving few openings. Ourawang shifted into boost and attacked with a flurry of blows, delivered with inhuman speed. The Captain simply activated her own force shield, and waited. Frustratingly, she calculated it to a split second to match Owan's boosting, saving her power and making ready for the next opportunity.

"Give up. Haven't we killed enough of your people already?" Ourawang taunted her. The Captain refused to respond. Owan's blade scraped along a wall as the tunnel narrowed. The Captain drove her backward step by step. Then Owan heard something—a quick careless footfall, an indrawn breath, or some fighter's sixth sense of what lay behind. She raised her force shield in time. Three more men ambushed her from behind.

"No honour?" Owan asked the Captain. "You knew you couldn't beat me alone. So this is what the brave Empire stands for." She spat the words. She was pressed on all sides, and her force shield couldn't hold much longer.

"Duty," the Captain said, "comes before anything else." Her clear calm expression was unchanged. Owan was surrounded, and her force shield collapsed. They all moved in for the kill.

Montaron couldn't survive a fucking Investigator. The man was about as big as three normal men, with a sword like a fucking tree trunk. Everyone said Investigators weren't really human, trained from childhood to be every bit as monstrous as the aliens they fought, and right now Montaron believed every one of those rumours. The tattoo crossing the Investigator's face made him look more inhuman. He was impossibly fast for such a big man, as fast or faster than Ourawang in boost. He called a loud unintelligible battlecry, and the vast sword came down.

Montaron flung himself to the side, scuttling like a rat. Keldorn Bloody Firecam did the same. The old man couldn't hold against this. He traded a few blows with the Investigator, weaker and weaker with his back pressed against a wall. Montaron took up Melissan's ancient weaponry and shot him, but that didn't stop him coming. The Investigator ignored the spot of blood on his trousers, and swung his giant sword as if he could kill both of them in one blow. Montaron lost the gun, reeling back to save himself. A second blow fell on him, but it was halted by a dead man's sword. Xzar muttered to himself, taking over shambling dead men's bodies to do his will. Damned creepy. This time it helped them out.

The Investigator sliced through the dead man with a wild yell. Montaron dashed around him and tried to stick the Investigator in the thigh. The man-giant's reflexes were ridiculously good. He had to run for it, Monty thought, but there was nowhere to run to. Xzar let out a wild scream, as if one of the surviving battle espers had finally gotten through. No way out of this one.

Imoen kept herself surrounded by a roiling circle of flames, hot as she could make it. It kept men away from her, good as a force shield. Through the smoke, she saw Xzar fail. A bloody nose dripped from his chin to chest, and an invisible force drove him backward, beating him slowly and messily. A dead man guarding him fell to the ground like a puppet with its strings cut, and then two marines went in for the kill.

The terrorist wouldn't die easily—Imoen heard screams, too low-pitched to be Xzar's—but she couldn't see him any more. She had plenty to worry about herself. A marine rushed in, daring to risk her fires, and Imoen faced him with her sword. He fought well despite his burns, and it took all she had to keep the flames up and defend herself. She was more a cyberrat than a fighter, in the end, and she was fast running out of tricks up her sleeve. The man backed her into one of the collapsing Hadenmen buildings, and called for his friends to help finish off the esper witch. Blood trickled from Imoen's ears, of all places, her brain working overtime with the effort to keep the fires burning. The marine batted her sword aside with strength she knew she couldn't even match on her best day, and he smiled as he went in for the kill.

 _Mater Mundi_ , Imoen thought, _we need you more than ever. Owan. Aerie._

Her shoulder hurt, and she reeled in pain. The marine pinned her to the wall. The blood was sticky, and her fires were going out. She could smell onions on his breath. He kicked her in the solar plexus, knocking all the breath out of her, and held her up to punch her in the face. Imoen understood. The Empire had orders to take espers alive, if they could.

 _Make you kill me first_ , Imoen thought, and tried to spit in his face. _Owan. Sis. Aerie. Run away if you can. Can't help me any more._

She felt something in the back of her mind. Her link to the others wouldn't die until she did, and inside she still burned.

There wasn't much she could do, but she stared at the man's cheek and imagined that fire, a single ray scorching and burning him.

 _Imoen, it's all right_ , she thought she heard someone say. Stupid imagination. The tiny flame swept along pink skin, searing into that one tiny spot.

The marine hit her in the mouth, shattering teeth, and she collapsed like a ragdoll. She spat up blood and teeth and hoped it went on his boots.

 _Stop_ , she heard inside her head. It came again, more strongly. _STOP._ Imoen didn't feel any new pain coming at her.

 _YOU ALL HAVE TO STOP._

Imoen saw the bright light of disrupter flare around them. She blinked a few times, at the golden man who moved in at inhuman speed and thrust his sword between the ribs of the man who'd beaten her. His glowing green eyes said it all. He was a Hadenman, not Adam but someone else, his disrupter implant raised to make the Imperials surrender.

They came in an army, moving as one mind within a thousand bodies. The Tomb of the Sleepers had been opened, releasing every last one of Adam's people. Imoen saw the Hadenmen open fire then subdue their prisoners, and they made the enemies stand down. And behind them all stood Aerie, with Adam's head tucked into her belt and dripping a trail of blood down her skirt.

—


	30. Beginning: Aerie

"Don't kill them," Aerie asked the Hadenmen, shouting the words. She saw Imoen on the ground, badly beaten, and she couldn't see Owan anywhere. Xzar stood bloodied above two marines, holding something that looked like a set of eyeballs in his hands. A disrupter mark seared the wall near where the battle espers had been. The Hadenmen disarmed those they could, but some of the soldiers tried to fight them. Aerie felt them die.

Keldorn and Montaron were near each other, both at the end of their ropes. It took three Hadenmen to hold down the Investigator to the ground. He kicked and struggled and didn't let go of his heavy sword. Ourawang was further back, locked in a duel with the ship's Captain. The marines around them had surrendered, but Owan and the woman continued their fight, their swords dancing in close deadly swoops around each other. Imoen scrambled up, and staggered beside Aerie. She clung to Aerie's side to support herself, with worry about her sister running through her mind.

"Stand down," a Hadenman rasped to the Captain. "All your men are prisoners, your army destroyed. We will execute them if you don't comply." Aerie hoped the Hadenmen were lying, but she knew they weren't. She'd had no choice, she told herself; she'd needed to save her friends.

The Captain looked back at the Investigator, to her other men, and nodded. She slowly laid her sword on the ground.

"Force shield and disrupter, too," Owan said. A thick coat of sweat covered her skin and plastered her hair to her forehead, and she'd a set of cuts and bruises. The Captain obeyed her. It was over.

"Wonderfully accomplished, fairy princess—" Xzar coughed, and brushed blood and smoke and other things away from his chin. Aerie hadn't felt him come up behind them. "One more thing. Quick! I need you!"

In this last battle, even the Hadenmen weren't trying to intervene. In a cavern, Melissan fought Sarevok the Widowmaker, at such close quarters that no one could try to fire at him without hitting her. Their heavy weapons clashed with the ground and against each other's armour again and again, and neither would surrender. Anyone could only watch.

"Are you proud of me?" Sarevok demanded, pushing her a step back. "When you and Father cast me aside, did you dream I'd do so much?"

"You should have stayed in the past and found your death there. It's over, boy," Melissan said. The end of her polearm struck at his legs but he moved on, impossibly quickly.

"I survived the Madness Maze and now I bear its power. I'm the Empress' consort, and soon I'll be Emperor." Sarevok lunged forward, and he and Melissan locked together at close range, their weapons striving and clashing against each other. "You'd like Lionstone. She's a ruthless sociopath, a lot like you."

Xzar's fingers dug into Aerie's shoulder, close to her neck. She shifted away from him.

"You leave Aerie alone. What d' you want with her?" Imoen said.

"You feel things," Xzar said, looking down into Aerie's eyes. "They locked you in a cage and you still feel what they feel. Things I don't understand. Tenderness, clemency, kindness, mercy. You feel in colours where I'm blind, where everyone's blind, cerulean and umber and cerise and radiant prisms. You have to make them stop. You can't let him kill his own mother."

"I think she's his stepmother," Imoen corrected, looking over at the battle with a professional eye. "Besides, she'll probably kill him. Good riddance."

"That's just as bad!" Xzar's body vibrated with distress. He left Aerie behind, and jumped in to join them.

She was trying. Aerie couldn't get through to Melissan's or Sarevok's minds. They were platinum-hard, closed with fighter's discipline. There was nothing for them but their battle. She didn't understand why Xzar, of all people, wanted to stop them. She knew why Imoen hated Sarevok the Widowmaker, the black broken stretches underground where he destroyed every last rebel, and the same reasons should be Xzar's. As her telepathy brushed uselessly against them, she knew that Xzar's power couldn't stop them either.

There was a common esper fear: when you escaped the Empire, you always left imprisoned friends behind, and you prayed that you'd never meet them on the other side of a battlefield. Friends shouldn't fight friends—and you can't let a son kill his own mother.

Xzar thrust his own body between them. Neither Melissan nor Sarevok minded. Aerie wasn't sure which of them did it, it all happened so fast. The next moment, Xzar was rolling on the ground—his left wrist sliced through. They severed his hand in one easy motion, as easily as cutting a joint of meat, and trod him down below their feet.

Aerie no longer worried and considered. Her mind flew out of her body and stitched it up, without consciously knowing how she did it. She grabbed Sarevok's mind, and sewed it into an endless loop of reliving the last five seconds, so that he fell down and stared at nothing; she took control of Melissan's mind, and tore her away from the fight. Then she fell to her knees and held Xzar's bleeding stump.

Melissan smothered a white-hot anger strong enough to murder, and when she was free from the mental command looked down at Sarevok.

"Take him prisoner, then," she ordered, "if you must."

—

Aerie got up from Xzar's side. She'd bound the stump and stemmed the blood; he was quiet and faint, lying on the ground wrapped in his Mistworld cloak. There were many other people who needed her, and she left him behind.

The Hadenmen stood guard over the Empire's forces, including Sarevok. Many of the living were wounded. The man she went to was terribly burned. His skin was black and yellow, his face and most of his torso charred. She cut away his clothes and armour. He wasn't in pain; there was too much nerve damage for that. He was barely aware of her at all, and she placed a sleep seal on his mind. It was all she could do; she had so little.

A Hadenman was behind her when she turned around. He—or maybe she; the body was slender and feminine between the golden plates—took up Adam's head, standing close over her. "We owe you more than you know," she said. The inhuman rasp of her voice was identical to Adam's. She cradled the head like she held a holy object. "Do you want anything from us?"

"Bandages, splints, stretchers, pallets, alcohol, disinfectant, anaesthetic, scalpels, scissors, bone saws, antibiotics, fluid replacements, blood supplements, burn ointment, and that's just a start," Aerie said. "Regeneration technology if you have it. Anything that's s-safe for humans." She understood field hospitals; you used whatever you could find. "Keldorn, you know what to do—see who can be helped. I need everyone—that includes you, Montaron. Owan, set up blankets."

Imoen rolled her eyes at the bustle. Sure, she'd help Aerie treat the people who'd just tried to kill them, when she had time. She looked through the prisoners' weapons, all piled up neatly in a corner by the Hadenmen. They were well organised. What she needed was easy to find. Plus, there was nothing nearly as big as this.

Sarevok the Widowmaker's sword was supposed to be even older than he was, an ancient blade from the height and glory of the First Empire. He'd taken it into stasis with him and never put it down. He called it _Deathstalker_ , and the name became almost as famous as he was.

It was a kind of claymore on steroids, and probably weighed more than Aerie did. Imoen slid it from the scabbard and carried it with both hands. Sarevok sat in chains on the ground, looking as unbothered by them as an emperor in purple linen. His face was all strong dark angles and planes, and the fanatic's glare in his yellow eyes felt like an esper burrowing into Imoen's mind.

The mind techs had done that and other things, when the Empire tortured her.

"Imoen Winthrop," Sarevok the Widowmaker said. "I know you, much better than you think. I owe you a great deal." His teeth flashed white. "You enjoyed Irenicus' hospitalities, and betrayed the underground for me."

There was a storm in Imoen's hearing, harsh winds distorting the sounds. She thought it was blood rushing through her ears.

 _For Alora_. The weight of the sword hurt Imoen's hands, and she clutched it too tight in her knuckles. _For Owan, for Aerie. You made me a traitor. You killed my friends._

"You gave us the keys. We made use of them," Sarevok said.

The rebel underground was a blackened ruin, scattered with the corpses of Imoen's friends. Sarevok cut Alora Three in half before she had a chance to scream, with the same sword. They made Imoen into a living weapon, the Typhoid Mary, and devastated Mistport by her hand.

"You'll pay for what you've done," Imoen said. Her voice was dull and flat, and her mouth dry as a bone. But she was ready.

He leered at her, not a man's leer but as if he could see straight through her, from her smoke-dusted ponytail down to her torn fur boots. "You were adopted by Dan Winthrop and the esper Gorion. You joined the rebellion ten years ago, through Golgotha's cyberrat network. You led a juvenile attack on House Roenall that garnered you attention. Since then, you've been a gadfly in Mistworld, Tiger Mountain, the Kossuthian Moons, and elsewhere. We learnt everything about you, until it was time to bring you in at last. Hello, Imoen."

"Is that what you do with the Empress? Tea and madelines and gossip about people?" Imoen said. She didn't care. She raised the sword.

 _Hello, Imoen_ , her torturer said, and for all she knew Sarevok the Widowmaker was watching from a gallery while she gave everyone up to him.

"Desist," she heard. It was the Captain, in plain grey uniform. "The usages of war aren't a matter of whim. If you've taken prisoners, treat them alike."

"Stop, please!" Aerie said, Imoen wasn't sure whether in her head or for real, desperate and weepy.

"Do you really think I'm a loyal servant of the Empress?" Sarevok said. "I lived when the Maze was discovered. I'm the rightful heir to all its secrets. You and I both passed through, Imoen, and by rights we should be allies. Bring the Empire down with our power, and reshape it in our image." His golden eyes seemed to be the only thing she saw. "I'll tell you things you need to know. Did you ever wonder who truly fathered ..."

Imoen had to act quickly, because Aerie was rushing forward at her. _She'll forgive me later_. She felt Owan, in her head, across the bond formed by the Mater Mundi and strengthened by the Madness Maze. _Do what you have to, sis._ Besides, Sarevok was a Bhaalson, and he was Owan's enemy by nature. Imoen felt the others, flickering in and out of her awareness like pinpricks of light. Melissan was blatantly exultant; she didn't care who killed her stepson as long as the job was done. Montaron didn't understand the fuss, and reckoned they ought to scrag the Empress' boy toy as a matter of course. Keldorn was old and tired, and accustomed to believing he was, and so he withdrew from having an opinion.

Looked like Aerie was overruled. Imoen swung the sword ungracefully, and its weight buried itself somewhere between Sarevok's pauldron and neck. He wasn't dead, and grunted in pain. Imoen lifted the sword again, and let its own weight bring it down. She was an inept butcher, chopping into Sarevok's neck piece by piece. After a while, his head hung loosely on a few strands of flesh, but he was certainly dead. His eyes had lost their golden light and blood soaked all around, pooling on the ground below his black armour and coating the sword.

She'd done what she had to. Imoen knew she should feel the Aloras and her rebel friends rested more easily now, but she couldn't feel anything. The sword was weird. For some silly melodramatic reason, there was a skull engraved in the hilt, and the blood on the sword flowed down some hidden channel toward it. It looked as if the sword drank the blood it shed, and Imoen saw a faint golden glimmer around it. Since it was a black sword it looked clean, Imoen told herself, and let it go with a clatter. Let someone bury it with its owner, or something.

She wanted to go hide in a corner, curl up and rest or maybe howl. She'd seen plenty of death since she became a professional rebel. The Widowmaker's gory corpse wasn't anything new. It should have been, and she should've felt more like this ended it all.

She'd never seen Aerie look so furious before. _He really wasn't worth it_ , Imoen thought.

"We had a c-chance to do something different from the Empire! We don't have to—to murder people! He was helpless, no matter what else he was." Aerie bristled like a pigeon with its feathers ruffled out of place—there was no other expression for it. "You're no better than he was! That is ... I m-mean ... " Icy rage snapped from her blue eyes. "We can make them better."

She was off like a shot, leaning over one of the Widowmaker's men, who'd come down with a bad case of acute steel poisoning via sword to the gut. Aerie knelt beside him, and reached for something. Imoen could feel it in her mind, the link between them brutally battered but unbroken. Aerie searched inside herself. This wasn't the Mater Mundi's possession, alien and powerful like the sort of angel with a thousand eyes and wings in impossible places on its body. It was much more familiar than that, something all Aerie's own. Something she carried within her own self, growing even as she did. There was a hidden place yet untouched and untarnished inside Aerie, an inner light that made her help and heal when anyone needed it.

Aerie bent over the man, touching him gently. And a spark flew from her, covering his terrible wound and transforming it. She gave freely, and had much more to give. The man's body knitted itself back together, miraculously, his healing time sped forward from weeks to seconds.

This wasn't esp. No esper could do anything like it.

"She's the first," Melissan said. The woman could be soft-soled when she wanted. Imoen hadn't noticed her sneaking up on them, and normally she was hard to catch off-guard. She bothered to glare at Melissan, although Owan's kinswoman pretended not to notice. "This is the power of the Maze," Melissan said, with a scarily religious fervour. "It takes your deepest nature, and changes you into what you truly are. Those few who survive develop new gifts, alien and potent. We'll bring down the Empire with them."

Aerie went to the next man, and then the one after him. She mended broken bone with a touch, soothed burns and grew out new skin in a moment. They stopped calling out esper freak to her, and started calling other things, kind words and pleas for help. Hadenmen's inhuman green eyes followed Aerie with reverence for opening their Tomb, and soldiers chosen by the Empire and handpicked by the Widowmaker for brutality looked at a mutant esper like they would a saint. She had changed everything.

But that power, Imoen thought, couldn't last: the candle that burns the brightest burns the fastest. Imoen saw the signs quickly in Aerie's walk and stooping posture, as if her slight pale shape became worn to a sliver of moonlight. The hungry voices would eat away at her, one by one, until someone had the sense and the will to stop her.

The stone walls cracked and crumbled above them again, sharply, and even Aerie had to look up and see the pinnace that pointed heavy disrupter cannon at them. A viewscreen crackled into life, looking down at them like a giant. A thin, cadaverous man, in esper's dusty black, gazed fixedly downwards.

"This is esper Xan, of the starship Darkwind," he began. "I'm merely a messenger. The AI has certain protocols. We have the pinnaces, a starcruiser with a full complement of scorchers, and a writ to use them. I believe the ultimatum is, Surrender, or die." The esper sounded glum enough as if he were the one surrendering, but the threat was more than real. Everyone knew that pinnace alone could destroy a continent in a few minutes.

"So you're an esper. Why not join us?" Owan's comm unit made sure everyone heard her voice, equally loud as the Empire's. "We have the Mater Mundi on our side, the Mother of All Souls. You must have heard she came to Mistport with us. Forget the Empire. We can make you free."

"That's not my duty," the esper said simply. "You have no valuable hostages, and we have all the firepower. You can unconditionally surrender, in which case the AI's offering up to two safe conducts, or refuse."

Imoen read Owan's face like a book. _Can't trust the Empire; but if we have to, Imoen—you already know I'd choose you. I remember you and Aerie opening the door for me._ Imoen's glance went to Aerie, and saw her barely listening to any of it, swaying glassy-eyed. She'd collapse where she stood any moment now.

"Don't accept anything." The Captain spoke crisply and clearly, across it all. "The Hadenmen are awake, the Enemies of Humanity. We're all expendable. Fire while you still can."

The esper's dour expression didn't change, but it settled into a mask on his face. He waited for the AI to respond, then gave a slight nod. "Goodbye, Captain."

The screen flickered. Imoen squinted at it, because there was nothing else to do. At least she had revenge to console her. The scorching was taking a long time to get started.

"Hello, Melissan. I hope you weren't worried about me." The Wolfling replaced the esper on the viewscreen, large as life and three times as hairy. "The esper's taking a rest, along with the skeleton crew. I suppose all the rest are trapped with you."

"They levelled the Maze. You old fool, I thought they'd finally killed you," Melissan snapped.

The Wolfling shrugged, a movement that used vast amounts of rippling, hairy muscle. "I've always had my own ways in and out of the Maze. I noticed this ship, and thought they might be a little excitable up here." His disturbingly human eyes flickered between them all. "You've taken prisoners, and awakened the Hadenmen. Where's Lord Bane?"

 _Bane, Bane, the Hadenman_ , Imoen knew. Everyone remembered the Hadenmen's battlecry. All the golden men and women—if you still called them men and women after they all chopped everything off—looked the same to Imoen. So who was their leader, if he was still alive? Imoen felt a pang as she saw Aerie finally collapse, and it was a Hadenman who rushed in to tenderly hold her up.

"She wakened us from the Tomb. She brought Lord Bane to us," he said. "He is rebuilt, he is recovered. For Bane!" he called. For the first time in many years, hundreds of Hadenmen joined their battlecry together. Gold glinted across their bodies, their green inhuman eyes lit up their underground city, and the countless stories with Hadenmen cast as the evil villains flashed across Imoen's mind.

They knelt, as if a royal procession came through from the Tomb. Imoen supposed that was exactly what it was. Lord Bane, the Hadenman. He came behind an honour guard of three, a bulky muscled man with skin that gleamed like it was fresh from a cloning vat. His implants shone with newly charged crystals, and his glowing eyes were awake and alert again. He'd first gone through the Madness Maze a long time ago, and when he came out of it changed men into inhumans. Bane, the first Hadenman. The first man. Adam.

In retrospect, Imoen thought, she should damn well have suspected the Adam who pushed himself on them in Mistworld was the same as the Lord Bane who'd led the armies against humanity.

He and Ourawang stepped around each other like two tigers in the same hunting ground, and shook hands as the first of the new rebel alliance.

—


	31. Epilogue

Dynaheir and what remained of her army made it back into the Darkwind, where they found the rest of the crew unconscious and the starcruiser's weapons disabled. She would spend most of the journey back trying to put together a report that wouldn't get them all shot on sight.

News of Sarevok the Widowmaker's death reached the Imperial palace the moment it happened, from certain secret implants Lionstone kept inside those who belonged to her. She left her council meeting about the new stardrive, banished even her maids from her sight, and stayed in her chambers alone for two hours. After that, she gave the order to Irenicus to bring one of the clones out of cold storage.

Cernd the Wolfling returned to what was left of his forest, refusing to partake in anything that might shed more blood.

Aphril, false daughter of Cyric, dreamed of blood and fire across all the Empire, a man with a golden hand whose face she couldn't see, and a distant Terror, coming from afar to eat suns and devour souls. She woke, and helped her father double the estate he gained from Bhaal's fall.

Phaere Despana was busy securing her control of House Despana, and eyeing with greed the moment when other Families would be ripe for hostile takeover. She had Shub hooked on her line, and she'd soon be head of the most powerful House in the Empire.

Ruth Hawthorne of Mistworld, esper and recent leader of the esper union, preached her new gospel with a convert's zeal. She'd been saved and touched by the Mater Mundi, the living goddess of all espers, and she wouldn't let that divinity die. She flung herself into rebuilding Mistport, piece by piece, so they'd be ready when the Empire next came. All they needed was faith in the Mater Mundi, to save them all.

The Last Standing disappeared into hyperspace, along with the Hadenmen's golden ships. A Bhaalchild and her ancestor from long years ago, a pyrokinetic cyberrat, a professional rebel, a pacifist avariel, a criminal, a terrorist, and an army of Hadenmen, out to change the Empire forever. They also had a traitor or two in their ranks, though they didn't know it yet. Plans and pieces set in motion for the new rebellion.

And, in deep space far away, aliens stirred with a killing frost.

—


End file.
